Mitoko Sohma

It's never to late mate, one of the blokes in our class is in his late 50s :D Another mate dropped out of engineering to do design IN HIS FINAL SEMESTER.

Haha, you're like me then: I hate it when you just get a character with no background. I love reading through stuff, finding out about different traits, why the character is the way they are etc. All the thinking behind the finished product I find fascinating. I guess I also like to keep some differences between me and my characters as well... for instance: Jesse isn't into anime or cars, two of my major interests. One of the cool things they drum into you in doing design is that: the vast majority of the world is NOT LIKE YOU :P

Yeah, I'm in my final year of my major course... technically I'm supposed to be reading, editing and executive summarising a group project report right now and it's the most painful thing I've done for awhile. Seriously, like, who the **** uses first person in a report!? ... umm, that's a rant I'll save for another time ^^;

But yes, many of Jesse's experiences are based on my own, and yes, she is a ranty person... a very ranty person infact, she consideres it a form of entertainment both for her and others. She's not just based on me though but is more like a conglomeration of my little group of friends. She actually started out as a "design persona" (a way of presenting research data) in a project last year, long story short I got attached to her and kept developing the character and a few of the others we made with her.

So yeah, Jesse's a second year design student, studying at QUT in Brisbane. She's a high achiever, sort of good at everything but best at nothing, so she's always second to someone on one particular point or another. She's also one of those people who just appears to be cruising all the time. Fact is she works her arse off, so combine that with her natural ability... needless to say she has resonably high standards, which the world consitsently fails to meet. Add all that together and she's quite a grumpy, jaded and cynical person. Those points are countered in her personality by the fact that she's also ultra-relaxed and tends to go with the flow; it takes a lot to get her properly mad. Essentially she doesn't much like the world, but is willing to humor it... for now. Because she's so laid back, Jess gets on with just about everyone... that doesn't mean she likes everyone but she's found that life's a whole lot easier if everyone thinks you're their friend. That said, she also tends to somewhat distant in her friendships, it takes a long time for Jesse to actually take someone into her confidence. She's also got no interest in starting a relationship with anyone right now instead focusing on her study (and, TBH: the QUT ID course doesn't leave enough time to run a relationship).

Jesse's polotics are left-of-centre, which fits in well with her workplace: WiP Coffee, a small, boarderline hole-in-the-wall cafe in Brisbane's West End (the "alternative" suburb here, think hippies, artists, cool bars, small cafes, retro shops, sustainability-nerds, vintage clothing... you get the idea). WiP serves as a bit of a hangout for the local arts and design community. The owner is a raving Communist, and Jesse's cool with that: she thinks it's funny, plus Communism had cool propganda art and annoys any nearby conservatives. Either way she's been working there almost a year now and pretty much does an assistant-manager's job in everything but name and pay-rate.

Because she's almost constantly broke Jess has become quite good at recycling/re-purposing old and retro gear. Most of her money goes on rent for her share house room in Paddington (slightly up-market version of West End and somewhat less dangerous at night). Paddington's also quite central with good public transport, which is good as Jesse can't drive and has no urge to. She does have a bike, and old, steel, single-speed job that she picked up off the side of the road. She doesn't actually ride it much but takes a quiet pride in how utterly rubbish it is.

Arts wise: Jesse's a skilled artist, but doesn't do the anime/manga thing. What she is good at though is graphic design, stencil work and so on. I guess as an extension of that she's a design nerd, formatting and typeface nazi, believes in white space, kerning and making sure everything lines up... think taking two hours to arrange one sentence and half a picture on a presentation board (you think I'm joking don't you? Trust me, this is one of my traits she got... I have done EXACTLY that, and I wasn't even happy with the result ^^;)

Otherwise... her likes dislikes and stuff are here http://wraith11.deviantart.com/art/A-bit-of-Jesse-128099250 if you're interested, along with a slightly older and possibly (I think) more comprehensive version of her bio... even that's just a summary, the full one's about 1800 words and growing. The most recent (better) picture I've done of her is here http://wraith11.deviantart.com/art/Do-the-Sly-138612082 and there's a gallery attached with more pics and stuff (if you've really got nothing better to do with your time) =P

Haha, sorry to have rambled on... now if you've got an extended character description :D

Oh, the other thing... coffee, coffee is important. Don't even attempt to talk to Jesse untill she's got at least two double-shots down her =P

Yeah, incase you hadn't guessed... despite having a good grip on her personality myself, I have an epic amount of difficulty trying to put it into words.