Name: Svetlana Elina Tigai
Nickname: Lana
Age: 18Gender: FemaleEthnicity: Kyrg Physical Description:Overview -
If someone calls Lana cute one more time, she’s going to…well, she’s probably going to stuff her frustration and journal about it like the late-blooming emo she is. She’s only just starting to be viewed as a woman, and that shift is rolling around even slower at the Hoxton Street Tenements, where she grew up. Plenty of the H10 crew probably babysat her back in the day, and still see her that way. She’s short, chubby, and for the most part neither her looks nor her style have dramatically changed over the years. She’s the sweet kid, the one that if you suddenly notice that she’s got a nice rack, your friend smacks you and calls you a perv (even if he’s noticed it, too).
Specifics -
She has long black hair that she tints raven-blue, and an attractive face that she usually doesn’t point at people all that often. She has round cheeks, a small mouth, and a sharp chin. Her tall forehead is hidden under a blunt fringe. She has this whole top down forced-perspective thing about her (exacerbated but not created by what is usually an extreme height disparity) that make her dark, shiny eyes appear larger, so that they seem to swallow you up until you just want to swim in the blue-black waters of her hair... At least, that’s the effect her gaze has more and more. Only a handful of years ago, that look just got her extra T.V. time.
Style -
Lana dresses casually in T-shirts (usually white) and skinny jeans (usually black). When she put on a dress for prom recently and her date picked her up, someone asked “who’s the tiny hooker?” She has not put on a dress since. Much as she wants to be allowed into the adult world, some things aren’t worth it.
Defining characteristics -
Immediately after turning 18, Lana got full sleeve tattoos with a swiftness that had to have been premeditated. Her new ink has caused some loud fights between her and her father.
Skillset:Count on her -
Lana is smart, careful, and more educated than she should by all rights be. A curious introvert, she has always spent time reading and researching. She brings an understated knowledge to any group, and while she isn’t initially flashy, people quickly grow to count on her. She’s extremely dependable.
On the flip side, she’s in that unique stage in life where she believes that she has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Because of this, she will take sudden and extraordinary risks. Her friends incorrectly view her as fearless.
To surprise you -
She’s that stunning person that will wait at the designated spot for you all day, do what she says she’s going to do, and then pull out a wildcard, regularly surprising people who have known her all her life, and terrifying her father. She is “the secret weapon.”
…And herself -
Lana is used to observing, eavesdropping, and going unnoticed. She’s a decent chameleon: i.e., teachers in her back pocket, but if she walks up to the cool kids and asks for a smoke, they don't think she’s going to narc on them. Not knowing who she is yet herself, being malleable, is as useful as it is disconcerting to herself.
History:Daddy’s little girl -
Lana was born and raised in the Hoxton Street Tenements. Her father is a second-generation U.S. Citizen with Kyrgyzstan parents and a first-generation bride (who vanished when Lana was young). Lana’s father is a bilingual Russian and English speaker, and in predictably watered down fashion, Lana can speak barely a word of Russian. Her father is a hard-working, good man, but was gone often to pay the bills, as his by-the-books factory job doesn’t pay much. The best thing he could have done for his daughter, he did. He raised her around the H10 crew, simultaneously the only gang in town who’d keep an eye on your kid and yet not induct them if they weren’t asking for it. It’s in large part due to Lana’s father’s long-standing presence that causes Lana to be viewed the way she is.
But all she wants is to be the gang’s bang -
Lana’s grown up watching and being fascinated by H10 and its oh-so-mature-up members. While she was pressured to do well in school and for the most part stayed out of trouble, she’s always wanted to experience the life she’s been protected from but lived right next to. Being part of the gang, doing drugs, having sex - all these things represent everything Lana wants, which is merely to be an adult already: the most childish wish of all.
Psychological Profile:Nature and nurture -
All Lana knows about her own heritage is that it isn’t what everyone thinks it is. She feels like she has more in common with a Turk or that Russian guy from H10 than she does with a Chinese American, if only because that’s what people incorrectly assume she is.
Technically she’s supposed to be Muslim, although her father doesn’t observe or require her to either. Despite growing up very “normally,” she is aware of her floater status. She feels the unreasonable disapproval of her grandparents, the unrealistic expectations of her father, the sense of distance that she will always, to some extent, experience between her and an America that she has just as much right to as anyone. She is unaware of the extent of influence that this has on her otherwise straightforward desire to fit in and grow up.
Motivations -
Whatever Lana settles down to be in life, it is likely she will do it with a steady amount of bullheadedness. She’s always going to be looking to improve and get ahead, whether that’s by working hard or by being sly. Her sense of commitment to stay on a certain known path is always at war with her imaginative desire to have more. She’s lucky to be intelligent enough (and if some of her 18-year-old personality sticks, selfish enough) to get it.
She’s a young woman who has played by the rules, and is chomping at the bit to do some slightly belated rebelling. There’s only a few things she wants right now: to get laid, discover her identity, do dumb shit, and maybe save the world.
Powers: Emotive life-creation
Lana has always been a day-dreamer and a doodler. Lately, though, her fixation with exploring herself through fantasies and expressing her emotion via art has taken on an urgent tone. When she sleeps, her head is stuffed with a veritable zoo of animals, as if the tattoos on her arms come to life. The walls of her bedroom are covered with frenetic murals of enormous jewel-eyed tigers, cranes unfolding into flight, alligators creeping low and heavy across her baseboards. She doesn’t know why she imagines animals so often, or why she feels trapped on the wrong side of the bars with them.
When she takes Neon, she’ll discover that she’s finally able to express various aspects of her personality - in a less than ideal way: physical animals posing as externalized stand-ins for her emotions. As a hormonal, repressed teenager with a long history of not knowing herself, it should be interesting what the cat lets out of the bag.
What she's manifest so far
Fear - dog - wounded
Ferocity - tiger - unharmed
Cruelty - asian giant hornet - wounded
Panic - cockatiel - unharmed
