Debra Jenkins

The Basics

Name: Debra Betty Jenkins
Nicknames: None. But if you call her Betty she will kill you.
Age: 53
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: History Teacher
Powers: Illusions. Specifically, she specializes in people and historical scenes. She wanted to be a painter when she was younger, but she was no good, so she took to using her power instead. She's managed to minimize the confusion between reality and illusions by doing this, but she does tend to prod people sometimes just to make sure they're real. That, and she can be caught chattering to air from time to time, but she swears this is just normal, every-day insanity.
Play By: Marina Sirtis

Hair Color: Dark Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Any Piercings? Her ears. Once she had her bellybutton pierced too, but she's gotten a little old for that now.
Any Tattoos? A fairy on her left ankle. Done in black, unfortunately, because she didn't get it at the time when they offered fabulous colors. She also has a simple flowing script on her right wrist that says, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. "
Any Scars? None really.
General Appearance:
Debra is a decent height, around 5'6", and tends to show her age. She dyes her hair a deep brown because if there's one thing she can't stand, it's white hair. But she has wrinkles around her eyes and smile lines around her mouth and sure, she's sagging in certain places, but she believes that there's no shame in looking the way you do, and so has no desire to change it overly much.

She's not thin. In fact, she could probably be called overweight. When she has free time, the low-cut shirts she wears tends to accentuate those facts, or make them more obvious. After a brief insecurity when she first gained weight, she has decided that it is part of who she is and that she enjoys looking the way she does. When she's in class, she tends to wear higher collars. She also loves long flowing skirts when she can get away with them, and very very high heels on special occasions. She does adore getting dressed up.

At first glance, Debra also tends to strike people as the classic hippie, new-age woman. Sure, she’s a little young for it. But with her favored long and flowing skirts, large jingling jewelry, and tendency to buy energy crystals, she supposes there’s a reason for it. But if she needs she can slip into a tiny black dress, just to show that she still can.
Personality: When you first meet her, Debra tends to seem a typical airy hippie. Her appearance doesn’t help that along, but there are other factors. For one, she’s very friendly. She’ll introduce herself to almost anyone and chat with them about any subject over the sun. Certain subjects will come up, however, like karma, the choices of shading in a Picasso, the oppression of communist ideas in public schools, and the travesty of the censorship of the Sistine Chapel. This is because Debra is very art and history focused. She always wanted to be an artist, but as she says that she has no talent for it, she’ll just admire and learn about it. That was what started her love of history. While learning about the paintings, she learned about the history surrounding them. So interspersed with all the art will be a lot of history as well.

She was born just a little too late to be seriously into the hippy movement, but it did influence her. She grew up in the age of civil rights, with the whole world changing around her—the pacifist movement, the Beatles, the aim toward a natural way of life, the Vietnam War…it taught her a few traits. One was to live in the here-and-now. The world is so chaotic that why look to the future for all the solutions? Who knew what the future would bring? Better to focus on the problems there that she could fix, and make sure she did something about it. It also gave her a desire for the natural things of life, a desire for equality for all, and a love of protesting. Oh, she’ll protest just about anything. In her time, she’s protested for meta, immigrant and gay rights, environmental movements, and all sorts of things. She likes doing it. She doesn’t know if it’s making a change but at least she feels like it does. She’s not pushy about her views, mind. She has her opinions, but she doesn’t tend to share them without prompting. And she’ll listen to anyone talk about their views too. She’s tolerant of opinions because she has to be, and she likes listening to people. She thinks it’s a good way of learning about them, and she likes learning how people work.

That said, although she’s tolerant of opinions, she tends not to really consider with ones that disagree with her own. She’s polite about it, and she’ll smile and nod, but she won’t listen. She’s very stubborn too, down to being bullheaded. If she wants something, she won’t stop at anything to get it. She doesn’t lose her temper. She’s too subtle for that. Instead, she’ll manipulate people with friendly smiles, casual hints and fluttered lashes until they do what she wants. Manipulation is definitely one of her faults. Why ask when you can let them come up with it themselves? She also tends to get so absorbed in her causes that she ignores the simple things in life. This also means that she tends not to notice or speak up about problems until it’s too late.

Likes:
History
Art Museums
Her husband
Teaching
People
Hole-in-the-wall clothing stores
Old campy TV shows and movies
Cleaning
Long Island Ice Teas
Chick Flicks
Her husband
Board Games
The Grateful Dead

Dislikes:
Science Fiction
Twinkies
Wool
Walmart
Heavy Metal
Her Inability to Sketch
Being ordered around
Being drunk
Reality TV (or, more appropriately, how she sometimes gets sucked into it)
Things that make her cry (it's embarrassing!)
The Beatles

Strengths:
Illusions
Historical Facts
Holding her Liquor
Teaching
Good listening skills

Weaknesses:
Sketching, painting, etc.
Oblivious to the "real" world
Clothes shopping
A slightly terrifying driver
Sometimes won't speak up until it's too late.

Fears:
Losing herself completely in her illusions
Losing her husband and her family.

Secret:
She can't have kids
She may have tried LSD once or twice
She's afraid of what her younger days did to her braincells

Father: Tony Belarus (deceased)
Mother: Andrea Belarus (deceased)
Siblings: Tim Belarus - 59 - Owns a grocery chain
Any Other Important People:
Husband: Walter Jenkins

Most children have imaginary friends. They hang around when a child is sad or lonely or perhaps even bored. So when Debra Belarus began talking about her imaginary friends at the precocious age of four, in 1963, her parents laughed, tousled her hair, and didn't mind. They still didn't care when it continued to six, then seven, then eight. But then as her mother was concerned, so bought Debra some dolls instead. Her mother was very traditional in that sense. She would encourage Debra to watch her as she sewed, cooked and cleaned the house, and to help as often as she could. Debra, however, proved to be a difficult child. She swapped toys with her brother--her dolls to maim for his legos to build--and asked why she couldn't wear pants like the boys. In a sense, this wasn't that much of a surprise. She lived in California, near Berkeley in a time of great change. Women's liberation, protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Right's Movement--all went round and round young Debra's head. She'd press her nose to the window to try in vain to see the protesters, and she'd listen to the radio and watch TV every time she came back from school. While her parents complained about a changing world, Debra reveled in it.

At twelve, most of the movements were dying down, and Debra began speaking again of imaginary friends. She'd come down from her room with a distracted look on her face, and her parents began wondering if they should bring her to a counselor, or if their stubborn daughter was showing signs of schizophrenia. It wasn't until protesters began walking through their living room and through the wall that they began to realize it might not have been in her head after all. A recruiter from Hammel showed up shortly after, and she was carted off to Vermont, kicking and screaming the whole way.

In the end, Debra didn't find Hammel as bad as all that. She was on the East Coast, center to political activity, and she enjoyed it. She also discovered with the help of a teacher that she really loved art, but she was a complete failure at drawing. However, she proved to be good with history. She graduated from Hammel at eighteen and went to University of Vermont to get her degree in history. She didn't know what she was going to do with it, but she thought that she might teach. She liked college. She began favoring the long, flowing skirts that her mother had always tried to get her to wear, but began going out to drink with boys, which her mother did not approve of. Nor would she have approved of the periodic use of drugs, but Debra tried not to make a habit of it.

When she was a senior, and just applying to get her teaching credential, she rear-ended someone's car in a parking lot. This was fairly common. Debra had all sorts of dings on her car. What was unusual about this was that the guy she hit didn't complain. Quite the opposite, in fact. His name was Walter Jenkins. And somehow, in spite of all her feminist beliefs and that he was two years younger than her, she happily married him after he graduated. She even giggled during the ceremony.

There was more work to do. Walter went to nursing school, and Debra started teaching history at the local high school. She was happy with him. She was happy with her life. When he finished nursing school, they both applied for jobs at Hammel. The only thing that troubled her came later.

She wanted children. She liked children, of all ages, and she knew Walter did too. But it seemed Debra couldn't have any. She considered adoption, but never found the right child, and so resettled in her life, mildly discontented. But she loved her husband a great deal, and even without the children, she was content to be with him, teasing and watching movies with him, curled up with him on the couch. When she did get restless, she found ways to get rid of it. When she had a weekend, she'd travel down to DC--putting more miles on her already sketchy car and sometimes dragging Walter along if he REALLY insisted on worrying about her driving--to participate in a protest or to see a rally. She was there for Obama's inauguration, and still has pictures (although they're a little blurry). She also loves to drag Walter to art museums.

See my gang.>> Lots of people there.

Name: Lugia
Age: 19
Experience: Eight years
How Did You Find Us? Luck?
Ready To Play? Nope. Never.