Name
Sydney Giselle Parker
Nickname
She answers to Syd more often than Sydney, actually.
Age
21- though if we’re being truthful, she sometimes looks a little younger than even that. Syd has a serious babyface going on, if she doesn’t hide it behind glasses and well-tailored suits.
Gender
Female
Appearance
Sydney Parker generally thinks that there was a limited amount of good-looking to go around in the Parker family, and her sisters took the lion’s share of it. Not that she minds—she’s inclined to think that being pretty is more trouble than it’s worth, and every time Saph brings home another story about a guy being a jerk or something of that nature, she’s almost certain she’s right. That said, she’s aware that she’s not ugly by any means, just… not them.
Her hair’s a sometimes-wavy, sometimes-curly mass of raven-colored locks that fall to around the middle of her back, with blunt bangs cut to hang over her forehead. The color is dark as pitch (unlike the pictures, in which it is brown). As a child, she used to keep them even longer, so she could hide her face, but now that she’s emerged into the adult world, she knows she can’t afford to be that shy anymore. There are good things to be done, and she can’t do them if she only knows how to hide. While naturally on the tousled side of things, Syd usually forces her hair into a demure bun at the base of her neck when at work, or else a ponytail otherwise. She thinks she looks like a child if it’s allowed to go unrestrained, so it’s kept under careful, precise control whenever she has to appear in public.
Easily her most striking feature is her eyes: large, bright, and green-blue, she most often surrounds them with a pair of square-framed glasses. She doesn’t really need the prescription, but as with her hair, she thinks they make her look a little more like an adult, and are thus well worth any inconvenience they might hold for her. Sydney is actually somewhat tall for a woman, though not as tall as Simone, having inherited her father’s disposition towards height, but none of his sturdiness. At a willowy 5’8”, she nevertheless can look like the smallest of her siblings should they walk into a room together, because her body language is unassuming and reserved, without any of the natural vitality and forcefulness of her sisters, at least not most of the time. Proportioned to be long in limb and elegant of stature, it’s nevertheless hard to tell on occasion. Her shape is neat and trim, though not without curvature. The proportions of her are such that her bust is a bit wider than her hips, and her waist quite small, giving her a subtle but not always-obvious hourglass.
Possessed of a pale, smooth complexion and dewy skin, she is almost never seen with any but the most basic of makeup products on, mostly because she can’t be bothered to waste the time. You can dress up a gosling all you want, but it’s still not a swan. Her face has a slight dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, but this she does conceal, with a clever application of just a little foundation and powder.
At work, Syd’s dressed sharply, in well-tailored women’s suits and crisply-pressed shirts, usually white, and heels. The click on wood, tile, or cement reminds her of who she’s supposed to be, and she appreciates that. On concert nights, she wears the black gown typical of a member of the orchestra, usually without much jewelry. It’s clear that she’s modeled her appearance after other people without really learning how to put personal touches on anything. When at home and absolutely certain that nobody but her cat will see her, she actually favors really loose, plaid shirts (normally bought in the men’s section of cheap department stores), acid-wash jeans, and tank tops, with mismatched socks, no less.
She usually smells of vanilla and honey, for whatever reason.
Syd makes money as a lawyer, but what she really loves are the nights when the orchestra plays. Not a professional musician, she nevertheless has a position with a relatively well-known symphony that operates in her area. She plays violin, a talent she has been honing since childhood.
Skills/Equipment
Syd has never had any martial arts training or anything of the kind, but she’s not an idiot, so she carries a taser on her person at all times, and knows how to use it. She can also fire a gun, if need be, but she doesn’t own one of those, generally not believing in them.
Personality
She’d tell you there isn’t much to know. Syd is, on the surface, very businesslike, solemn, and serious. She looks like the kind of person you could just bowl over at will, be that physically or in a conversation, but for all that, there’s a surprising amount of strength to her. Personality-wise, that is, as she is rather physically weak. She has something of a complex about her appearance, which is why she goes to such great lengths to appear to be somewhat sterner and older than she actually is. The disguise is fairly good, but the astute observer may be able to pick out that she has something to hide. To get anywhere in a male-dominated profession like hers, it’s not enough to be intelligent and good-hearted. You have to make people believe that you mean business, that you’re worth listening to, and you can’t do that if they’re too busy looking at you and thinking you resemble their teenaged daughter.
You also can’t do it by being a shy, mousy wet blanket, which is exactly the kind of person Syd used to be. Back when she was just Sydney, the baby of her insular little family, and the one that was always sick. She was a withdrawn, introverted soul who had trouble making friends outside of a very small circle of them. She was never bullied in school; her sisters were far too protective and careful for that to happen, but all the same she never really made much of an impression on anybody either. She was the quiet girl at the back of her class, and that was it.
Since those days, she’s toughened considerably. Going to college two years before most people do forced her to more or less grow a spine, and learn to let harsh words go without absorbing them. She was always intelligent, and found that academic work was to her liking. It was a political science professor that convinced her to go to law school: but he also warned her that it wouldn’t be easy. So Sydney learned to stand straight, talk clearly, and dress like she knew what she was doing. The rest was easy, and nowadays, she works full time at a public defender’s office even at the tender age of 21.
Syd is ruled by her logic and her knowledge; she does not like the idea of relying upon her feelings to make even the most minor decisions. That works well enough for some people, but she fears that if she opened her heart up again even a little, she’d revert to that helpless little child she used to be, and that’s the last thing she wants. An extensive education has made her very aware of the goings-on in the world, and she’s an avowed feminist, advocate, and champion of the downtrodden, or at least she’s trying to be. Nothing about getting up in front of people and talking comes easily to her, but she’s doing the best she can, and a strain of her sisters’ stubbornness (admittedly mostly Saph's, though she knows Simone can get that way when she needs to) must have survived in her after all, because when she really cares about something, she’ll never give up. She thanks them for that, viewing it as something they gave her by example, and to this day, she sometimes refer to her odd moment of stubbornness as "borrowing a little Saph."
Underneath the façade of professional distance she puts up, part of Syd is still very tender and vulnerable. Somewhere, all the disparaging remarks she earns, the occasional losses in court, and all the people telling her she’ll never succeed do hurt her, but in the times when that’s at its worst, she always has family to rely upon, and she thinks that’s important. Deeply devoted to the people she loves, she’ll never hesitate to help one of her sisters, even if there isn’t much she can do.
Despite herself, Syd still believes in love, though mostly as something that happens to other people. She’s never had a serious boyfriend or even a one-night stand, and mostly doesn’t think she’s suited for that kind of thing.
The third and final Parker child, Sydney’s was a mostly-happy childhood punctuated with bouts of illness. She was a colicky baby, and even now her immune system isn’t that great. She never had leukemia or anything so horrible, but she was prone to episodes of bronchitis that would last an entire winter, and for some reason even when she exercised, she’d never gain much muscle mass or anything like that. It was worse as a young girl than it is now, and it led her parents to worry for her, to the extent that they coddled her quite a bit.
Though she just found it bothersome at the time, she now realizes that it was hurting Saph especially, and still feels kind of guilty about it. At the time, she coped with everything by retreating inward, not really socializing with anyone and instead devoting herself to her violin and schoolwork, both of which she proved to be exemplary at. Then and now, she was not one given to smiling, laughter, or really anything that looked like happiness, so her family learned to gauge her moods by the timbre of the tune she was playing. Naturally, she was mostly overlooked at school, but that didn’t much bother her.
Sydney has always looked up to her vibrant, lovely older sisters, and at times been jealous of their ability to express themselves and really be the people they want to be. Even so, she loves them dearly, and would never wish even the faintest harm upon them. She thinks that Simone's job is simply amazing, and likes to visit the zoo whenever she has free time on a weekend. This comes partially from her interest in gaining new knowledge, and also partly because part of her really wants to expand on what little common ground sha and Simone really have with one another. She loves going to the theater with Sapphire, and they tend to alternate who gets to pick the play.
With no friends or major social obligations in high school and having already skipped a grade in elementary, Syd graduated a full year early and went to college in the Northeast, graduating another year ahead of schedule and attending law school at Harvard. She turned down a few offers from prestigious firms to pursue her ideal of getting justice for those who otherwise couldn’t afford it, and has now been employed at the Public Defender’s office for a few months. She’s gradually discovering that it’s nothing like she’d planned, but holds out hope for it even now.
Other
Sydney lives in a loft-style apartment in the city, by herself save for a very fluffy grey cat named Tennyson, after the poet. The place is packed with bookshelves and cozy furniture, though she doesn’t actually own a television. Syd has a fondness for both cooking and ice cream. Actually, she loves all sweets, but swears that Saph’s are much better than hers and refuses to eat basically any confection that wasn’t made by her sister.
Post
(This is how Syd met her only male friend, a guy named Jack.)
If Syd were being honest with herself, she didn’t want to be here. The voices burned her ears and the smoke seared her eyes and nose; the patrons were at various stages of inebriation, writhing about on the dance floor as though they were but foam on the ocean, tossed about by waves they could feel but not see. It wasn’t something she knew or understood; so many such instinctual things were beyond her. She’d given them up for a mind of tempered steel, a sharp, bladelike wit that cut through obfuscations so automatically she knew not how to leave the mystery be anymore. She could feel the thrum of the bass seeping up through the legs of her chair, and reminded herself that it would not be very fearless, professional woman for her to grab her legs and tuck her knees to her chest in hopes that the smell of vomit wafting from the restroom wouldn’t make her sick as well.
Yet, here she was, and here she would remain. Because her friend Elizabeth was performing tonight, and Syd had made it a point to attend every single one of her concerts or gigs that she could, minus those that work prevented her from seeing. In her mind, Liz was an incredibly-talented singer and stageperson, and it was any day now that some person with a record company was going to happen to be at one of these shows and then boom, her friend would be as famous and loved as she deserved to be. The thought alone nearly teased a smile from Syd’s pale lips, but not quite. She didn’t smile often, and less-often naturally, so her happiness with the idea was expressed only by a slight softening of her eyes and the happy strains of some Vivaldi piece that struck up in her head. Simone was the force and vibrancy and melancholy of autumn, Sapphire the energy and freshness of spring. Sydney was the chill and quietude of winter. Sometimes, she wondered if they might have had a fourth sister, who was something more like summer. But it didn’t matter. As three, they were complementary in different ways, and that was nice.
She was brought from her musings by the ebbing away of the bass, signaling the end of the act before Liz. Straightening in her seat, Sydney pushed her glasses up on her nose and glanced eagerly towards the stage. Logically, she knew that this one show was unlikely to make a difference. It was so hard to get a career in music, was what everyone said and most tacitly knew… and yet. Yet for once, as with all things involving the people she loved, Syd couldn’t quite bring herself to think with her head alone. Her heart, that pitiful, fluttering organ in her chest, knew differently.
If only she remembered how to speak its language.
Somewhere to her left, something moved, and she turned slightly to see what the disturbance was, nearly jumping out of her chair when she realized a stranger had taken the seat next to her at her table. “Sorry,” he said, though there wasn’t really much apology to it. “There’s nowhere else left.” He smiled disarmingly, holding up his hands as if to show that he was no threat. He had very much the classic look of a Californian about him- all suntanned skin and sandy hair. It reminded her of some people she'd known in school, always complaining about the snow in Cambridge.
Sydney glanced around, realizing that he was right, and her mouth turned down a bit. She wasn’t very good with things like this, to say the least. “Oh, no problem.” She blinked, then turned back to the stage, resolved to ignore his presence as much as she could without being downright rude. Curling a loose strand of hair around her finger, she tucked it neatly into place behind her ear, chewing absently on a lip.
“So,” he continued, “what’s your name?” He was close enough that she could see the dilation in his pupils, and knew that he was probably drunk, though he didn't seem belligerent. Inwardly, Syd sighed, but she tried to remain polite.
“I’m Syd,” she said simply, debating for a split second before she went ahead and stuck out her hand for him to shake. The man looked at it as if dumbfounded for a second, then threw back his hand and laughed, causing her eyebrows to furrow and a thin line to appear between them. Just what was so funny, anyway?
He took the hand and shook it firmly, shaking his head. “You’re a strange girl, Syd. I’m Jack.”
