InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Oh no! Not again!"

kait: keeping adverbs in business since 1987 (staircasewit) wrote,
@ 2010-12-09 13:15:00

Entry tags:

! profile sheet, character: josephine farr

profile | josephine farr

j o

b a s i c s

name: Josephine Justina Farr
age / dob: March 24, 1992; age 18
nationality: American

occupation: Intern at a local campaign office
major: Philosophy (pre-law)

sexual orientation: Heterosexual
status: Single
best friends: Freddy Williams

a p p e a r a n c e

height: 5'3"
weight: 117 lbs.
eyes: Brown
hair: Brown, long and wavy

disabilities: Far-sighted
wardrobe: Usually quite understated and professional, though she does have a bit of a love for scarves and flowy dresses.
distinguishing marks: None

played-by: Olivia Thirlby

p e r s o n a l i t y

• She is sapiosexual, and hasn't given it much more thought than that. It really doesn't matter to her what someone looks like; it's all about the mind. Of course physical attractiveness is a bonus, but if someone is unintelligent, they are automatically unattractive to her. Her ideal mate is someone with equal or greater intelligence in relation to hers, and unfortunately, not a lot of people fit that criteria. She's had vague crushes on both men and women, but doesn't consider herself bisexual and would likely never sleep with a girl. Not that she's slept with any men either. Her virginity would probably be fairly easily given up (sex is entirely different from emotion in Jo's mind) but she's not particularly interested in seeking anyone out to offer it. Sex just isn't something she thinks about a lot.
• Josephine hates pictures of herself. It isn't that she hates her appearance exactly, but she doesn't think she's photogenic at all, and systematically untags herself from the vast majority of pictures that pop up on Facebook.
• She is a horrible driver. She failed her road and range exam twice, and in the two years since she's had her license, she's totaled one car and moved on to her second. Driving with Jo is usually mildly terrifying. Her mind wanders to the point where she doesn't pay attention to things like the odometer/traffic signals/other cars, has a bad habit of speeding to begin with, and gets caught for it regularly.
• She has so very few truly meaningful relationships (all of which she's fallen into by accident; she has no idea how to actually cultivate one) that she is terrified of losing them. For all she doesn't really care if she pisses off people she isn't close to, the slightest hint that she's annoyed the people she does will lead to a very quick apology, and she isn't above groveling for forgiveness to them and them only.
• After her parents' divorce, Josephine and her sister were both briefly put into counseling by their mother at the suggestion of the court, who thought that they might've been damaged by the experience. Jo maintains that it was unnecessary and that she is very firmly sane to this day, and will become defensive if it's ever seriously suggested otherwise. Thus, when she started having anxiety issues in middle school, she kept quiet. She doesn't like people telling her how she is or how she thinks, especially psychiatrists, and even the lure of drugs to keep herself under control isn't enough to get her to see one.
• Jo's brand of intelligence is of the "common sense" variety. Things that operate on logic are very easy for her to pick up on. More right-brained subjects are the ones she's lukewarm about: foreign languages, english, any sort of fine arts. She's much more comfortable with a formula or a theory to think on than a short story to discuss, which she finds both tedious and pointless. As far as the range of her knowledge goes, she knows a little about a lot of random things, while her specialties are philosophy, politics, and social science. Meanwhile, she's completely lost when it comes to a lot of pop culture.
• Unlike a lot of people with anxiety problems, Jo does not suffer from low self-esteem. In fact, she thinks she's amazing, and pretty much capable of anything - even when she isn't. Toss in a compulsion towards perfection and being the best, and it sets her up for disappointment sometimes. She's getting a little better at knowing her limits, how much she can pull off at once without overextending herself, but as she settles into college life, it's almost inevitable that she loses her footing now and then.

likes
• Coffee: her true vice. What, did you think she just gets out of bed with all that energy? Venti Americano at Starbucks, black. She keeps the place in business.
• Puns. She has no excuse but the fact that she's kind of lame sometimes and likes wordplay.
• Alcohol. Though this might be surprising to those who are used to scholarly Jo, she does like to relax now and then. Which is very hard for her to do naturally. Alcohol helps a LOT. It's rare that she gets absolutely wasted (she shouldn't; her tongue gets very loose), but as long as she's got a ride home/around people she trusts to take care of her, she's down with partying. She's a bit of a lightweight being so small and so young, so two or three beers will usually have her happy and nicely buzzed.
• Trashy novels. For someone who doesn't put a lot of stock in romance (if any at all), she spends quite a bit of time reading about it. It's Jo's form of entertainment and recreation - something to do when she wants to be amused and not think too deeply, and it's better than television. She doesn't talk about it a whole lot because she wants people to think she's more intelligent than that. Sadly, this is where the vast majority of her knowledge of "matters of the heart" comes from.
• School. Jo likes things she's good at, and academics are right up there. She's in a hurry to get out of TCNJ anyway, so she takes classes during the summers and everything.
• Arguing. Well, debating is more like it. A worthy partner and a battle of wits makes her day, seriously.

dislikes
• Stupid or lazy people. Jo believes in merit, and that you get what you give. People who don't put in the work don't deserve success, and she doesn't have sympathy for people who either don't put in 110% or have the natural talent to pull something off effortlessly.
• Weak women. She doesn't like weak anyone really, but especially women who allow themselves to be pushed around by men. She's an ardent feminist, and gets up on her soapbox about it now and then. Jo has made it a point to be able to take care of and defend herself, and she thinks other women should to.
• Meat. She just thinks it's gross. You're eating muscle and do you know what kind of chemicals it's probably been treated with?
• Things she is not amazing at. Jo really likes being good at things. If she's not good at it, there's a high probability she'll think it's stupid - like most sports.
• Being blatantly hit on. She's fine with flirting a little with people she's already comfortable with, but having people she doesn't know well do it just inspires disdain and discomfort from her. It makes her feel like a piece of meat, and she's usually very unsure of how to respond.

best traits
• Intelligent and motivated. Jo is really, really smart, and has the will to put her brains to work for herself. It's a rare day that she doesn't have anything to do or want to do it. She's not a complainer, and would rather be challenged and learn something than coast by.

• Optimistic. She believes in mind over matter, force of will, and that hard work will always pay off. After all, it's worked for her so far. She's pretty upbeat as a result, when she's feeling good about herself, which is usual.

• Self-confident. Jo is her own harshest critic (and she is a very harsh one), which means that everyone else's criticism hardly makes a dent. Whether it was being made fun of for being a teacher's pet in school, for her glasses or height or enthusiasm for some unpopular causes, most taunts fall on deaf ears. Only the people Jo cares the most about have the ability to make her feel insecure about herself, because she actually does want them to like her.

worst traits
• Control freak. Jo likes things to go her way. She usually makes this happen by micromanaging down to the molecular level. She has the tendency to boss people around and poke into their business, and goes into a vicious sulk when they don't perform her bidding. When things aren't organized or don't go according to plan, she starts to get antsy. When it's one or two things, it's fine, but as life piles more and more on top of her, her adaptability only stretches so far, and she becomes downright panicky.

• Elitist and judgmental. Though she doesn't do it consciously, Jo condescends to people she doesn't consider clever enough. She is a hard person to please, with very high standards both for herself and for others. She does measure worth by how many degrees or awards you have to show for yourself, and she is impressed by things like ranks and titles. Sometimes going to a not-exactly top-tier school is downright painful for her, but she'd rather blow through TCNJ with flying colors and move right along to grad school rather than risk being held up by academic or financial issues.

• Manipulative. Jo's first response to something she doesn't like is "how do I change this to work for me?" with very little thought for the repercussions on others. Though she does use her powers of persuasion for the general good sometimes, mostly it's to get herself somewhere or something, and she's definitely guilty of using people. It doesn't matter how you're successful to Jo, just that success is achieved, which occasionally raises some interesting moral dilemmas for her. She's not without her own set of morals, but ethics is kind of something that applies to other people to her.

b i o g r a p h y

early childhood
Josephine was a highly precocious child, put into programs for the gifted and accelerated classes as early as elementary school. She absorbed knowledge at an astonishing rate, and developed a taste for success and praise in the meantime. A solemn and studious little girl, she didn't have a lot of friends in elementary school. In fact, for a long time, she would have counted her older sister as her best friend.

It's been Jo and Max for as far back as she could remember. Though her sister was five years older, they went through some pretty formative events with primarily each other to lean on. Foremost was their parents' divorce, which was bitter and messy. Bernard came home from work one day with the announcement that he had met someone else, and Charlene took it very personally. She used her clout in the legal system to sap him for alimony and win primary custody over their two daughters, aged seven and twelve. Their parents never patched up their relationship to anything better than frosty, and when Bernard moved out, his presence in all of their lives diminished considerably. He remarried his mistress a year later - a woman from work named Sarah McFadden, who was admittedly a sweet person and tried to make up for the failings of her stepdaughters' birth mother for a time. But it was too late for her to endear herself to them, and Jo and Maxine both rebuffed her attempts. Bernard later took a job in Philadelphia, and visits became even more infrequent. Sarah had a baby boy a year into their marriage, and the three of them have a very separate life from the three Farrs still left in Ewing. Charlene responded to the ordeal by throwing herself even more into her job, and so, the sisters were left with each other as their only constant allies.

middle childhood/early teens
Jo was placed into counseling following her parents' divorce, thanks to various adults who were concerned about the effect such an event would have on an already somewhat odd child. However, she was developing quite the will as well, and eventually flatly refused to speak to her psychiatrist. Thus ended the period of observation, and her mother and the counselors had no choice but to let her go about things in her own steady way. After all, she was very successful, so there couldn't be that much wrong with her, right? She was a Girl Scout and a straight A student, and there certainly didn't seem to be anything wrong, but Josephine would soon start to feel the stress of her busy life and the expectations she had to live up to (for others, but mostly for herself), and she would come dangerously close to breaking a few times over the course of the next few years.

As Jo entered middle school and Maxine went to high school, the sisters began to drift apart - a natural progression of their ages. Josephine was left virtually friendless for a time, and hurt by the fact that Maxine didn't even seem to like her anymore. She withdrew from people in general a little bit, no longer quite so talkative, with the tendency to hang back rather than throw herself into the fray. Out there on the fringes, she met a kindred spirit in Freddy Williams. He was a year older than her, but the two of them hit it off in a big way. He was just as smart as she was, and she liked that a lot. Finally, she had someone she could really talk to, without having to pretend to like stupid girly things, or that she didn't like things like science and history for fear he'd think she was a nerd. He became her best friend, and still is to this day.

high school
With high school came puberty and hormones, of course, and that never brings great things. For Jo, it brought acne and odd feelings for her best friend, though it sadly withheld any kind of substantial increase in height. On the plus side, Maxine graduated high school and entered college, and started actually talking to her again. Jo became braver when it came to talking to people and making decisions, and started looking around for something to devote her considerable amount of energy to. She started joining clubs - lots of them. Her favorite teacher sponsored the debate team and Jo joined up, thus discovering a knack for persuasion. When her mother heard about this, she recognized that her daughter would do well in her own field, and guided her toward the path of law. Jo latched onto the idea of becoming a lawyer wholeheartedly, and didn't let go.

Meanwhile, her peers were discovering and experimenting with the opposite sex, and Jo... well, Jo only cared about one boy, really. There was no real epiphany or anything; her friendship with Freddy had turned into a deep love. And one day, she kissed him, and told him so. Immediately, she regretted it, terrified that it would screw up their friendship forever. It turned out she didn't need to worry - it wasn't long at all into their first date before they agreed that the whole thing was super weird. She didn't take back that she loved him, though, because it was still true. Just not in that way. The notion that she like liked Freddy faded quickly, and though there have been a couple of other boys that managed to capture Jo's attention, it was only in passing. She had a boyfriend in her senior year of high school, lonely once again with Freddy having graduated and moved on to college. The relationship ended after a few months, having never progressed very far physically or emotionally. Jo was too busy getting ready to graduate, preparing to take community college classes over the summer to get a head start on her credits, before beginning at TCNJ in the fall.

today
Jo is in her first semester at TCNJ, though thanks to AP credits and a couple courses she took during the summer, she's already well past that credit-wise. She's an intended philosophy major, following a recommended pre-law track. Though she's no longer a Girl Scout, she volunteers at a youth center, works as an intern for an education reform campaign, and attends a kickboxing class once a week. She lives with her mom, but it's a big house and she gets lonely being there by herself most of the time, so she likes to study in the library or coffee shops and keep herself occupied elsewhere. Sometimes she goes out to dance or drink, but Jo usually has to be persuaded first that there's nothing more constructive she could be doing.

the future
Jo is going to be a lawyer, and that's that, no question in her mind. She's very single-minded about this goal, and hasn't really made plans beyond it. She's going to graduate from TCNJ (with honors - the whole point of going there in the first place, besides to stay near her friends and family), go to law school at an Ivy, and progress from there. Jo vaguely supposes that one day she'll find someone to marry and have children, but having seen what her mother is like trying to have a career and a family at once, she thinks she'd like to wait until she's where she wants to be in her chosen field first. And if she ends up waiting too long, she'll just have a test tube baby with Freddy. Problem solved.

coolest accomplishment ever
That probably depends on your definition of "cool". Jo has made it her business to be a winner, and she has the trophies to prove it - Girl Scout merit badges, debate team medals, etc. Though all of them combined do good things for Jo's measurement of her self-worth, no one of them holds any special value to her. If you asked her what she thought her coolest accomplishment ever was, she would tell you about that time in traffic court she talked her way out of a stack of violation fines and a license suspension.

worst day of her life
Jo had her first panic attack in the eighth grade, after stressing herself out for weeks over a science fair project. She began to feel ill right before she was due to present to the judges, and left to go to the bathroom and pull herself together. When the panic hit, she seriously thought she was dying; she couldn't breathe and could hardly see. She ended up blacking out for a few seconds slumped in one of the stalls, and was so freaked out she wouldn't come out of the bathroom. She told everyone she had the flu and was throwing up so they wouldn't think she was insane, and they called her mother to take her home, and she never got to present her project.

m i s c e l l a n e o u s

birthplace: Torrington, CT

FAMILY:
• Charlene Farr, nee Smith; mother, age 50. Judge. Jo's relationship with her mother has been consistently neglected on both sides. Though she admires Charlie as a strong woman and a professional role model, they aren't particularly close emotionally and never have been. Jo has people she seeks out when she wants affection, and Charlie isn't one of them. They still live together, and their normal interactions consist of cordial discussions about how school is going and whether or not they've spoken to Maxine recently. A lifelong New Englander, Charlie raised her daughters to be as rational, liberal, agnostic, ambitious, and composed as she is herself, and she succeeded, for the most part.

• Bernard Farr; father, age 48. Accountant. Bernard has played a minimal part in Jo's life since he remarried. His relationship with Charlene (borderline hostile) doesn't really encourage continued interaction between the two sects of the Farr family. He's always seemed to Jo to be more interested in his new wife and son than he ever was in his first family. Jo and Maxine have spent Thanksgiving or Christmas with their dad since the divorce, and see him every couple of months or so. He lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia now, which is a great excuse for Jo not to participate in father-daughter time.

• Sarah Farr, nee McFadden; stepmother, age 44. Housewife. Sarah is fine, Jo supposes. She'll never really like her on sheer principle - she likes to mother her step-daughters when they visit, and Jo doesn't feel she needs another maternal figure, especially not in the woman who broke up her parents' marriage. But she's civil to her when she makes it out to visit her dad's family, though she keeps her very much at a distance.

• Maxine Farr; sister, age 23. Medical student, Columbia University. By far Jo's favorite family member, Maxine and Jo are sisters and also friends. This wasn't always the case - Maxine resented her hangaround little sister and the necessity of babysitting rather than having a social life in high school, and Jo resented the fact that Maxine had assumed the entirely necessary maternal role in their household, while Charlie worked all the time. However, once Maxine became an undergraduate and Jo matured into her teenage years, the girls began to butt heads less often. She is Jo's best female confidante, and her absence while she's away at grad school hits Jo hard sometimes, leaving her feeling very alone at home. The two of them are remarkably similar in personality, though Maxine is a bit gentler, more sensitive and feminine.

• Brian Farr; half-brother, age 9. Jo sometimes forgets she has a brother, despite the fact that he's been around for nine years now. She doesn't see him that often; a small handful of times per year, tops. He's more like a cousin or something to her, the son of some distant relative rather than her own father. He gets brought up from time to time in conversation when there's not much else to talk about with her dad, but she isn't very interested in him, really.

l i n k s

JOURNAL | GAME | PLOT TABLE