Dr. Mel Lawrence
The Gentleman Scientist
[i]"Is it... supposed to turn that color?" [/i]
Gender: Female, though she largely presents as male
Race: Human
Age: 29, or thereabouts. Because of her masculine garb she often gets mistaken for a man of 25 or younger, considering her lack of facial hair or strong musculature.
Height: 182 cm (6’)
Build: Tall and thin, as if she were stretched out like taffy sometime in the past and never quite snapped back. Her tendencies to go days without eating, absorbed in an experiment or conundrum, contribute to her emaciated appearance. She often wears shoulder pads and bandages around her chest to disguise her more feminine attributes.
Skin color: As pale as the grave, made almost translucent from so long belowground. The skin on her hands is burned by chemicals and sunlight. Sunlight? All the way down here?
Eye color: Striking green, with deep, sleepless shadows beneath them.
Hair color: A brown so dark it looks black.
Hair style/quality: Thick, straight, and parted on the left, kept masculine and short by her own careful scissors. Often in disarray or perpetually combed to one side from her anxious fingers toying with it during some late-night scientific vigil.
Usual clothing style: Mel can often be found in the garb of a slightly old-fashioned French gentleman- a red double-breasted waistcoat, brown trousers, and a cream button-down rolled up to the elbows. Her cravat is usually scorched or smells distinctly of chemicals, and she often has a bloodstained bandage wrapped around some part of her person from one scientific accident or another. She also enjoys sharp suits in outlandish colors- burgundy being her favorite- and carries a carpetbag with her medical supplies. When she’s performing ‘Feats of Science!!’ in Mahogany Hall, she chooses an impractically large white coat with scorched sleeves, and her green-lensed eye protection gives her the appearance of a crazed insect. A zailor you met at the Singing Mandrake said he saw her in a dress once, but you haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since.
Usual demeanor: Cheerful, charming, and polite, but with a distinct self-destructive streak and an insatiable curiosity that often puts her at odds with conventional society. She’ll talk your ear off about her research any day of the week, but there’s a sense of anxious, manic instability to her intense gaze, her fidgeting hands, her half-comprehensible monologues full of words like ‘dephligosticated gas’ and ‘bathynautic spheres.’ Her constant motion and preternatural energy always seem to be on the cusp of wasting her slim frame away like a sliver of wood heated by a magnifying glass. At parties, she comes across as witty and intelligent, though she can be a bit too honest when drunk- which, let’s face it, is more often than is strictly healthy.
Voice: Her accent is interesting, reminiscent of East London before the Fall, but heavily repressed by high-class Received Pronunciation. For those meeting her for the first time, the highness of her voice is often the first clue that she isn’t a gentleman, as it’s one aspect of herself she chooses not to disguise. After all, she talks so much it would be a near-impossible task to check every word she says for the correct pitch!
Other remarkable details:
Mel doesn’t actually use male pronouns or pretend to be a man anymore. She spent a long time in disguise on the Surface in order to attend University and grew comfortable with a more masculine gender presentation. However, since coming to the Neath and discovering the freedom of moralities that the dark permits, she’s been gradually readjusting to being more honest about her gender. This transition displays itself in the peculiarities of her language- for instance, she would refer to herself as a "Gentleman Scientist" and not a "Lady Scientist." Still, she probably won’t tell you that she’s female- she just wouldn’t lie to you if you asked.
The skin beneath her button-down is crisscrossed by scars- not the scars you would associate with a gentleman scientist, but knife marks, hook gouges, rope burns. A sailor’s scars, each treated as carefully as possible so they only show as fine, white lines across her torso. There are even remnants of sea-trained muscle, made soft and blurred by years of alcoholism and poor eating habits.
There’s a small scar through her right eyebrow. Don’t ask her about it, but perhaps with a few glasses of wine and a great deal of convincing, she’ll tell you of her own accord why she is afraid of the smell of cedar and earth.
edited by Mel_Lawrence on 10/19/2018
edited by Mel_Lawrence on 12/12/2018
