Jane Thomas, Ph.D, is a sassy Muggle maths prof. (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} algorithms) wrote,@ 2011-08-31 18:37:00 |
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!app
you are not some saint who's above
giving someone a stroll through the flowers,
you've got so much more to dream of.
oh girl, sail her, don't sink her.
you are not some saint who's above
giving someone a stroll through the flowers,
you've got so much more to dream of.
oh girl, sail her, don't sink her.
OOC |
NAME: Cindy TIMEZONE: PST/[GMT-8] BIRTHDAY: January 21st MESSENGER: AIM: mehtric EMAIL ADDRESS. widowcity at gmail CDJ: cilantroPB: Nora Tschirner JOURNAL TO BE USED: algorithms |
Basics |
NAME: Jane Lavinia Thomas AGE/BIRTHDAY: 27 / March 4th, 1953 BLOOD STATUS/RACE: Muggle and unknowingly oblivious to the magical world. Yeah, that's right. She doesn't even GO here. OCCUPATION: Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MAPS) at University College London. Not Arithmancy. Maths. Again, she doesn't go here. |
About |
FAMILY: HUSBAND: PERSONALITY: A good way to assess Jane Thomas' personality is to go to her office and observe her buried knee-deep in work. On a surface level, there's the obvious nerdish, stubborn passion for the things she loves. Ask her about graph theory and the Dijkstra algorithm, and watch her hands flail and eyes light up like a kid's in a candy store as she tries to get you to understand her fascination. You probably won't be able to grasp whatever esoteric mathematical term she's talking about, but it's obvious to any simpleton that Jane isn't afraid to do what she loves. And ironically, it's a passion that isn't easily explained in eloquent or even rational terms. For example, Jane can't exactly explain why she would stay up after hours in her office working on her latest research project at the expense of her sleep schedule and personal health. Or why she spent so many years slaving away on a thesis that swallowed the whole of her social life and her sanity. Nor can she really tell you why she still keeps in contact with her family, even though they're the vinegar to her baking soda. Nor can she explain why she doggedly insists on sticking by her husband Matteo's side, even at the disapproval of her parents and her suspicions of an affair. Anything Jane does with her time has to truly be worth the minutes and hours and days spent, and when she decides something is worth it, she won't even give half a fig about what you think. Then there's her ability in working with logic and solid foundations to produce a concrete solution. Let it be said that Jane is a champion of solid facts and proof. QED might seem like three arbitrarily chosen letters in the alphabet, but quod erat demonstrandum is the catchphrase that dictates much of Jane's thinking. No three positive integers a, b, c besides 1 and 2 can satisfy an + bn = cn? Unless you're Andrew Wiles with a Time Turner, sit the fuck down. You're a wizard? Charms or it didn't happen. Basically? Prove it. She's far from gullible, and if you tell her something, there's a mighty good chance that she'll probably question your evidence. Jane Thomas is a straight-arrow woman who firmly believes in the karmic kickback and reaping what you sow. And if she has to exact payback herself, then so be it. If you borrow something of hers and lose it, don't expect her to be so friendly if you ask to borrow anything ever again. If you mess with her son, you will hear from her about it. And as much as she'd love to possess a stronger grain of moral fiber, she isn't above sabotage, breaking even, severing ties, and plucking out your eye for her eye. She believes in punishment as a form of justice, but nevertheless, her mode of thinking swings both ways; she also believes that no good deed ought to go unnoticed. She tries to reward acts of kindness as she sees fit. After all, as they say in algebraic terms, do unto one side of the equation what you would to another. Beyond her base foundation of pure logic is a willingness to work with the limited amount of resources she has. Just like a mathematician is forced to develop proofs out of a severely limited stock of information, Jane believes in playing with the hand of cards she's been dealt with, rather than whinging for a new deck. Jane isn't the embodiment of brute strength, but rather a quiet willpower that allows her to suck it up and brave the storm. She's not one to lord her problems over anybody else without warrant; she assumes that nobody gives two figs about her problems, like the fact that she's never quite gotten along with her parents or the fact that she thinks her husband might be having an affair. She works with what she has and grits her teeth as opposed to throwing a fit. And in some less than desirable instances, like the fact that she basically gave the middle-finger to a potential cushy future with a WASPy husband who would have no doubt pleased her parents or the dark ages of her thesis, she's willing to make things work. She has a can-do spirit that allows her to trudge through things even when the circumstances are absolutely shit. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, Jane Thomas is not a quitter. Even if she's fighting a losing battle, she's still going to see through it until the very end, because there are few things more frustrating than a piece of work left unfinished. Just ask her students, who often gripe about her harsh grading for incomplete homework. Despite Jane's insistence for personal freedom and solitude, she is still a creature meant to love and be loved (gosh, what a GIRL). To note, this is not a singular effect of her rocky relationship with her family, but more to do with her irrational need to validate her relationships, so to speak. Her emotions still consume the better of her, no matter how much she champions purely rational thought. When she seriously doesn't know the answer to a question, she can make wild leaps of faith and draw out arguably questionable conclusions. She's more than willing to accommodate family, friends, and her students to the best of her limits, but she doesn't ever forget any of the instances those limits have been crossed. After all, it was only a matter of time before Jane caught wind of the suspicious nature of her husband's whereabouts. And now that her life is taking on an extremely bizarre direction, it looks as if that irrational side of Jane may be making more than just a guest appearance. And if Murphy's law has any say in this... LIKES: Mathematics, ice lollies, football (GO WEST HAM! United, United!), cricket, vinyl records, ginger ale, novels, Ada Lovelace, the Rolling Stones, teaching, Italian food, travelling, footnotes, knit jumpers HISTORY: If things had gone the path that Doug and Susanne Thomas had intended, Jane Thomas would have been a docile Christian housewife by now. Unfortunately, she only qualified for one out of the three -- and that alone was enough to exasperate her parents. Truth is, Jane never quite fit the mold of her parents' expectations, much like that itchy Christmas sweater in the closet that never quite fit. It was her brother that seemed to tick all the proverbial checkboxes; Charlie was the one who had a charming way with words, the one who knew just when to suck up to the right person, the one who shared his parents' conservative outlook on life. Jane, on the other hand, never believed in mincing her words, aspired to belong in the storied gentlemen's club that was the field of mathematics, and didn't believe in God. As a kid, she was frequently bored to tears and slumber at church, and no matter how hard she actually tried, she always managed to break yet another obsolete rule in etiquette class. Jane was too reticent, too gauche, too blunt to be a proper lady. Her parents figured that sending her to boarding school for her primary and secondary education would correct her, so to speak. They enrolled her in an all-girl's boarding school, Caterham, in the posh area of Surrey, hoping that she would emerge from the school a well-learned, well-bred young lady. What they didn't know was that Jane was learning about evolution in her biology classes and readily believing every word of it. Or the fact that she cut Religion class to sneak out with her friends. Or the fact that she was a stellar pupil in Maths. In fact, Math Team was her favourite part of school, and it brought out the geeklike passion that had been repressed during her childhood. Algebra had been a breeze for her, and she would study during the summer to skip ahead a few levels in her maths classes. Math gave her a sense of accomplishment, from the moment of solving a proof to the creativity of approaching an equation. She received an impressive array of A-levels, most notably the A in Mathematics, as well as a glowing recommendation from her math teacher that guaranteed her admission to Warwick University on a math scholarship. Her parents were wary of this direction that Jane's life seemed to be taking. They allowed her to attend, but not without great hesitation and many a furrowed brow. They were firmly entrenched on the conservative side of things, which did not include parenting a spinster daughter. They certainly hadn't discouraged her from being an academically well-rounded woman, but they foresaw their daughter burying herself knee-deep in research, with zero trace of a social life. Their fears were temporarily assuaged when they realized that Jane had found a niche group of friends at Warwick, in addition to a bit of time left for the occasional boyfriend. Sure, she hadn't displayed the same level of promise like Charlie, who was riding the fast-track life of an investment banker, but her parents still held hope for her that after college, she would start thinking about a more practical future. They saw math as a temporary distraction, an arbitrary major, and a fleeting interest. However, they were proven wrong by the time Jane announced that she had just been given an offer to pursue her Ph.D in Mathematics at University College London. There was no stopping Jane once she had set her mind to it; even the harried insistence from her parents couldn't have convinced her to cancel her one-way ticket to London. However, the post-undergraduate life and the inevitable quarter-life crisis hit Jane like ton of bricks. First of all, the Ph.D stipend was too measly to afford her a comfortable lifestyle, and let's face it: Jane was too proud to beg her parents for money. Doing so would mean the inevitable "I told you so" talk, and she would have sooner drunk bleach than see the arrogant smirk on her father's face and the exasperated sigh of her mother's. When she wasn't slaving away on that dreaded thesis (Partial Differential Equations and Geometric Analysis), she was living a bare-bones life in her dingy London flat. London was too dirty, too rough-and-tumble for her. The Ph.D. students were all male and somewhat older than her, which greatly limited her choice of potential drinking buddies. Dating was a string of unsuccessful dates, each more awkward than the last. Not to mention, most of her friends had opted for the cushiness that the Coventry suburbs promised. Needless to say, the first few months of graduate life were hell in a handbasket. But Jane pulled through. Proof by proof, her thesis began to develop. She met people who were funny and interesting and made good company. She got offered a teaching position with UCL shortly after handing in her enormous thesis. The one thorn on her side was her brother's announcement that he was getting married to Claire Blickman, that awful tart he'd been dating for the past few years. Using Charlie's savings from the past few years, they planned a storybook wedding at a vineyard in Verona, the town of Romeo and Juliet. Barf. The wedding itself was a special kind of hell, one that involved all of Charlie's pigheaded friends making salacious jeers toward Jane and her relatives chiding Jane for giving up a stable future as a housewife in favor of a modest life as a graduate student. It was of little surprise that Jane mysteriously disappeared shortly after the nuptials; truth be told, she just snuck behind the bushes with a bottle of wine and a glass, hoping that the time would hurry the fuck up so she could get out of this stupid bridesmaid dress and board the next flight to Heathrow. Salvation came in the form of The two began to see each other on a regular basis, and Jane found herself inextricably attracted to the mysterious Italian man, who was a Muggle government lawyer hired to travel around to work on different global cases. Not wanting to delve into the intricate world of law, Jane was impressed by Matteo's charm and cunning that it seemed pretty plausible for him to have been a hotshot lawyer with money to boot. And she sympathized with the fact that he had an estranged family (hey, she could relate!), that she never really pried into his family history. And when they got married shortly after, she would never have imagined that Matteo's family members were actually randomly hand-picked Muggles that he had hired off the street to pose as his cousins. Nor could she have foreseen that Matteo was actually Cesare Zabini, a wizard. She loved the man she had married, even though her parents were less than pleased. Nevermind that he was a wealthy lawyer and of the right socioeconomic background. Nevermind the fact that he was handsome and charming to boot. Nevermind the fact that he treated her well. Nope -- her parents frowned upon the fact that their daughter (who had always strayed down the "wrong path", so to speak) was making the wrong decision of marrying somebody of the "wrong" race. And no matter how stubbornly Jane insisted that Matteo was the right person for her, her parents were nevertheless disappointed in her. They attended her wedding, but even their attendance was filled with a bit of tension as they had to mingle with the in-laws. That, and the fact that the in-laws were just randomly chosen people plucked off the streets. She gave birth to Dean a few months ago, and as a result, went on maternity leave from her teaching in order to devote time to her son. However, all the time spent at home only seemed to emphasize the suspicious natures of Matteo's sporadic and frequently-occurring "trips". His excuses became thinner and thinner (I mean, really. British interest in Egyptian political tension? What!?), and the gifts he sent back from his so-called trips grew even more lavish, as if he were trying to cover something up. Now that Matteo's been in Egypt for an indefinitely long period of time, Jane's at wit's end. She's already made a list of possible reasons to account for his random disappearances (among other odd ... quirks. Like his naivete about racism.), and #1 on the list is that he's having an affair. And if anybody knows Jane Thomas well enough, they know that she's getting to the bottom of this. Even if it means booking the next flight to Egypt. |
Just for fun |
FIVE THINGS: • Muggle elitism, much? The magical world exasperates Jane to a magnificent degree. This is a woman who believes in absolute, hardcore science (she was never one to accept religion at face value, either), so she's going to be quite wary of these people that call themselves wizards. Unless there's a way to prove that magic has scientific bearing, she's not buying it. Also, the wizards are going to get condescended at. Hardcore. I mean, seriously. You guys are having a huge war that parallels a Muggle war that happened 40 years ago? Really? REALLY? And you have the balls to call Muggles ignorant? We're two steps ahead of you fools. AND we're able to get by just fine without wands or whatever hocus-pocus shit you have. With Jane, I'd love to explore the relationship between Muggles and wizards, most notably the oppressor vs. the oppressed dynamic. Even though Jane's part of the latter bracket, she doesn't feel like she's the victim here. She's not used to being the one pitied here, and she'll gladly fight back with a haughtiness that basically says, "I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP." • You know that awkward moment when you find out that your husband's a wizard? I must be some sort of sadist or something, because I'd dearly love for Jane to deal with the shock of finding out that Matteo Viteri is actually Cesare Zabini. It's going to be different than Harry Potter's epiphany, because she's been raised for over twenty years to think rationally and logically. She's a champion of scientific thinking. Magic is, quite frankly, the last thing she'd suspect of her husband's random disappearances. • If you were surrounded by a bunch of wizards, your natural instinct would be to forge connections with the other Muggles who are just as confused as you are, right? Right! That said, I'd love to have Jane forge some kind of alliance or even just some kind of interaction with the Muggles in the game (Petunia? Candy?). It's not that she feels a certain kind of kinship, but rather, she's one to spot similarities and use them to her advantage, like "Hey, you. YOU'RE a Muggle-whatsit too! PREASE TO BE FILLING ME IN." Except, you know, less derpy. Plus, Jane's an upper-middle class Muggle, and the Muggles in RM are of totally different walks of life, so any alliances forged will probably have some degree of hilarity. • I'm definitely looking forward to Jane's interaction with the Death Eaters, considering that most of them have pretty close ties to Cesare. Also, there's the fact that a lot of them would dearly love to see her head on a goblin-made platter. I mean, seriously. She, a so-called lowly Muggle, married into a too-hot-to-touch pureblood family. WHO DOES THAT. What kind of Potion did she slip in his drink? Jeez. • MATH. Ha, no really. As a former Mathlete and engineering major (...lawd.), I'm excited to bring in a character who has to rely on rigidly logical thought processes to jump to conclusions. Lists, deductions, footnotes, proofs --- Jane's all over that shit. She approaches problems from a purely deductive, scientific point of view, which can't be said about most of the characters in this game. Basically, the differences could be potentially hilarious here. |
