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Name Alicia Xiaohua Chin
Age late 20s
Height 5'2"
Weight 120
Ethnicity Chinese-American
DOB April 3
Birthplace Fremont, CA
Current Residence Oakland, CA
Appearance She's small, but she has a presence that more than makes up for it, with that sort of fiery, independent disposition characteristic of strong women who are out to make it on their own. When she's on the job, she dresses professionally; off the job, she likes to lie around in a t-shirt and sweatpants. She normally disdains jewelry and makeup except for special occasions, though she does usually wear earrings. Her hair is dark and slightly longer than shoulder-length.
Family Steven Da-Wen Chin (father), Rebecca Mei-Hua Chin (mother), Alexander Yu-jin Chin (brother)
Likes journalism, writing, reading, green tea ice cream, animals
Dislikes journalism, rude people, racists, boring city council meetings, right-wing nutjobs, people who don't pay attention to politics


Bio:

Alicia has always loved writing, ever since she was young. Creative writing assignments were her favorite, and she often turned in stories that were twice or three times as long as the other students'. She loved making up stories, and she entertained ideas of being a published author when she grew up. These dreams never left her as she got older, but being a practical person, she also kept a sharp eye out for a "day job," something that would give her plenty of time to write (or, better yet, involve writing) but that would also allow her to keep a roof over her head. She toyed with teaching and translating (she is competent in Mandarin), but oddly enough never considered journalism for more than ten seconds.

Then she took a journalism course in college and completely fell in love with it. Alicia was always interested in politics, and that and her natural rapport with people made her a natural at journalism. She took several more journalism courses, landed a summer internship, and then graduated and sallied out in the world with nothing more than her resumé. She decided not to pursue any more education; the only way to learn journalism, she figured, was to actually practice it.

Life is tough for a beginning reporter, who are often paid by the story. Alicia shared a tiny apartment with another college graduate, and they'd return home from discouraging job searches and commiserate over their post-college lives over dinner. Still, Alicia kept writing and kept fattening her portfolio, and she kept sending her resumé to the larger papers in the area, who more or less ignored her. Finally, she wrote a crime story that got some attention: a story that focused on the criminal behind the act rather than the crime itself, in the style of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. She got a job offer from the Oakland Tribune and snapped it up.

Alicia is more or less happy where she is now, though of course she wants to go upward, ever upward, and aspires toward Pulitzers and a job at the Los Angeles Times, though she's loathe to leave the Bay Area. She now makes enough money to afford a modest studio apartment in Oakland that allows her to keep her dog and cat.

Alicia was recently engaged to be married, but her fiancé died in a tragic car accident. It took her some time to recover, but now she has regained her composure and is ready to start looking for love again.


History of the Character:

Alicia hasn't undergone quite as many changes as Alex or Jesse, since she was a later addition to the cast and was never meant to be anything more than a peripheral character anyway. She was originally Alex's half-sister, a child from a previous marriage of the father and therefore a full-blooded Japanese, but I discarded that when I redid Alex's character and made her a full sister. She seems to be much less traditionally Chinese than her brother (who writes and speaks Chinese better than I ever will), which I take to be a product of her being a daughter. Chinese families tend to treat their daughters worse than their sons, so the girls have a tendency to reject the culture (and date white men, haha).

Alicia is fairly autobiographical, though her career path is modeled somewhat on Meredith May, an alumna from my school who now works for the San Francisco Chronicle. I only wish to be half as successful! Appearance-wise, Alicia is based heavily on my cousin, who is quite a successful woman herself. Her personality, of course, is modeled quite obviously off my own. I hope she doesn't come off as a Mary Sue; I'm aware of my numerous and myriad flaws, and Alicia has quite a few of them as well.

I don't know why I gave her a fiancé only to have him die in a car accident. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Furthermore, now that I've done it, I don't really know what else to do with Alicia. I mean, how do you top the tragic death of a significant other? I sure don't know.


Other Notes:

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