holly lane parker

[holly]

-- HOLLY LANE PARKER !

-- NAME: Holly Lane Parker
-- NICKNAMES: Hol, Laney, Parker (or the Angry Relative Specialty, her whole name all at once with added exclamation points)
-- AGE & BIRTHDAY: 28 & April 27
-- BIRTH PLACE: Los Angeles, California
-- ORIENTATION: Heterosexual, but with the ability to appreciate beauty in all forms of packaging
-- OCCUPATION & SCHOOL GRADE: carpenter, high school woodshop teacher
-- PLAYED BY: Eliza Dushku

-- PERSONALITY !

—TOUGH: Growing up in a bad part of Los Angeles made being tough a requirement for any kid. Attitude and strength were ways to protect yourself and it was much better to get into a fist fight and suffer a busted lip instead of chickening out and becoming someone’s punching bag for the rest of your life. Holly was no different and got into a lot of fights as a kid. She didn’t have a mother figure around to soften her edges and her father was always angry. She grew up surrounded by anger, so she turned to anger for all her needs. For a long time she didn’t really understand how to laugh or smile when she was happy and even now she doesn’t really understand how people can cry when they’re sad or reach out for comfort when they’re afraid. The way Holly dealt with her emotions was by getting angry and though over the years she’s cooled down, she still doesn’t deal well with fear, insecurity, and sadness. She’d rather vent her emotions on a punching bag instead of talking them out. She does her best to never cry and should she feel little pricks at her eyes she bites them back, takes a deep breath, and toughs it out. It’s no surprise she’s got a bit of a temper on her, but her ferocity comes in short explosive bursts and doesn’t linger for long. She tries to control her temper and she’s put her past behind her…but that doesn’t mean she won’t punch someone in the face if they’re really asking for it.
-- RESTLESS: Being bored makes Holly want to tear her hair out. If she doesn’t have a lot of different things to do or work on, she gets antsy and upset. This often results in her flip flopping between overworking and over procrastinating—either way, the work is always done and done on time no matter how much drama is involved. Meditation is not her strong point – she likes to be moving, thinking, talking, doing ANYTHING except staying perfectly still. The more she keeps herself occupied, the less time she has to think about the skeletons in her closet and how they might one day come spilling out. She’s restless because she wants to avoid things and she’d rather stay up all night fixing tables rather than fix herself. For the years she was on the road she’d only take month-to-month rental contracts, enter relationships that were doomed to fail, and she never fully unpacked her bag—it always feels like she’s looking for something. On the bright side, her restless behavior makes her unafraid to try new things and be spontaneous and she often drags people along for the ride.
—BOLD: Holly doesn’t often let things stand in the way of what she feels like she needs to do. She hates being held back and has a tendency to barrel through obstacles and charge forward…even if she doesn’t exactly know what she’s doing. She’s not a very shy woman and has no problems being confrontational or just generally outgoing. She kind of enjoys ruffling feathers or yanking people out of their shy little shells. She likes to tease people and she doesn’t often hesitate when she wants to say something. But, just because she’s bold doesn’t really mean she’s brave. She sometimes goes overboard or uses her take-charge attitude to hide what she’s really feeling. Insecurity makes Holly question whether or not someone like her deserves what she has and when she doubts herself she feels the need to run away from the problem. Because she’s so concerned with not letting herself be weak in front of other people she keeps her problems to herself and it can get extremely lonely.

-- LOVES: creative pursuits, old board games, martial arts films (particularly the badly dubbed kung fu), the beach, spontaneity, reading, eating and sleeping (in that order), traveling, antiques, late nights, getting paid, music, mocking things or well placed sarcasm, wood working, furniture and home decorating stores
-- HATES: Everyone in the Parker family, being told what to do, feeling trapped, early mornings, seafood, religion, schedules, insects/bugs/creepy crawlies, horror movies, “shiny happy people”, cold weather, cleaning, taxes/accounting, obnoxious teenagers

-- HISTORY !

Holly Parker was the only child born to Jaz Parker and a mystery woman who Holly doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know. All her father ever said about her mother was that she was a “lying, nosy, mouthy pain in the ass”. Her father worked in downtown L.A. in the garment district as a production manager for a clothing company and he worked very long hours. Holly spent most of her time going to school and then spending all her after school hours hanging around in the living room of her next door neighbors, the Medina family. Her father was angry all the time when he got home all he did was yell about how hard work was and how much he hated it and how hard it was to take care of Holly. There were some times where her father seemed like a real father and he wasn’t upset, but the older she got the rarer those times became. What her father used to be like became a distant, faint memory and in his place was a man she felt very little connection to.

When she was about 9 her father was laid off from his job and nobody was willing to hire a middle-aged college drop out. For three years her father was unemployed and after a year of searching for a job with no luck, he stopped looking. They lived off the entire contents of their life savings, drying up Holly’s college fund. By the time her father managed to get lucky and land another job, their relationship (and savings account) was nearly nonexistent. Every day was a screaming match between them and the harder Holly fought to get away, the more her father tried to control her and possessively keep her at his side. She had behavior problems in school and would get into fights with other kids. Her grades started slipping as she did everything in her power to stay away from home and all the textbooks stacked in her bedroom. Money was always a problem and it got to the point where Holly and her father were living paycheck to paycheck. When she got into high school her grades were better, but the fighting didn’t stop. Anger was what she’d learned her whole life and she did not take kindly to people trying to walk all over her. She made mistakes, got suspended more than once, and dated guys who had a bright future ahead of them in juvenile detention. The only class she seemed to put any real effort into was her woodshop class…something about high powered blades chopping wood up was therapeutic. When she was sixteen she started skipping a few classes in order to pick up a part time job at a small carpentry store in downtown, keeping a strict eye on the number of absences she could get away with in order to graduate.

It became clear that there was no way she’d ever be able to go to a regular college like other people her age—she just didn’t have the money. She decided to enter a two year trade school for carpentry, partly funded by her strict (but helpful) boss. Though Holly had just taken the job for money, through school she found she actually enjoyed wood working for personal satisfaction. Being able to actually craft things instead of being stuck cutting wood was a taste of freedom she began to crave more and more. She graduated from the trade school when she was 20 and started working full time at the carpenter’s shop repairing furniture and doing the occasional custom piece for a customer. Work was a welcome relief from having to see her father, but every time she went home it was another fight and each time it only got worse.

Her father had been drowning in his own hate and anger for 20 years and he was determined to drag Holly down with him. When he got laid off again, he turned to drinking and wasted the remainder of his money on alcohol. Soon the bills started piling up and Holly’s salary wasn’t nearly enough to cover it all. Mortgage, property tax, utilities, food…it was too much to handle. It was not exactly the proudest moment of her life, but she had to make a decision…stay in this trap and probably die trying to bail her father out of his mistakes or cut and run to save herself. So, she packed what she could into a duffel bag and bought the cheapest bus ticket out of California. She hopped around the country doing carpentry work where ever she could find it, sleeping in sleeping bags or crashing on people’s couches, and after two years of that unstable (but gloriously unbridled) lifestyle, she found her way to Chicago at the age of 22 and began working in a shop. A shop owner from Capeside saw her working on some designs one day and asked her if she’d be willing to come work for him instead. Another month and she stepped off the bus in Capeside, hoping it would be the last stop on a long, long journey. With the help of Richard Hunter, the owner of a custom home furnishings shop and a local high school wood shop teacher, Holly got a job hand crafting beautiful pieces of furniture and other wood pieces. A far cry from the basic construction work she had been doing, it rekindled that energy she’d had before for carpentry. She’s spent six years working for the shop and developed what she likes to think of as a real life with her replacement father, Richard, and the other shop employees – she even stepped in as the high school wood shop teacher to help Richard have more time with his family and the store. Still, something in the back of her mind tells her it’s not real, it’s not going to last forever, so that beat up duffel bag sits by the closet door, keeping all the skeletons locked up and in the dark.

-- SAMPLE !

See Dexter Everett Reedy, please!

-- OOC !

-- NAME OR ALIAS: Ang
-- AGE: 21
-- THREE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE YOU: Chinese Food Consumer
-- HOW YOU FOUND US: RPG directory

[* NIKKI THE PEACOCK QUEEN]

-- ACCEPTED !

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