I've already decided that my character should be wearing high heels and makeup. She carries pepper spray but freezes up when she should be relying on basic self-defense tricks. I want her to be aware enough of crime scenes to know how disturbing it is to find a murder victim "arranged" in a peaceful pose instead of sprawled in their dying moment. She has excellent memory for things she paid attention to, and can draw recognizably. What position would fit her? Would she be a paperwork intern, or crime-scene recorder? I'm willing to say she got the "it's disturbing to find them arranged" thing secondhand.
Make her some flavor of forensic pathologist or forensic scientist, because if she's not one of those or some flavor of police officer, then in real life what she is is a serious problem at the scene of a crime.
@Wreybies got there first. A forensic scientist would fit the profile you've outlined. It would probably make for an interesting character quirk if she was squeamish around body parts and their subsequent arrangement after murder and mutilation.
i agree, but a forensic tech wouldn't be wearing high heels at a crime scene... it bugs the bleep outa me to see tv shows where even detectives are in sky-high heels, as they dash off from their precinct desks to a crime scene! just imagine how their supposedly scene-protecting paper booties would be compromised by those daggers!!!
I was going to say what Maia said -- the problem with forensic investigator is that, unlike Marg Helgenberger, they aren't going to wear high heels and a spiffy leather jacket to investigate a crime scene. You could go with either an assistant district attorney or a crime reporter. You could also have someone like a writer who has family members who are/were cops. (Like her dad and brother are cops. Or her dad, mom, brother and sister are cops. Or however you want to go.)
The high heels and makeup weigh more than the actual being there... like I said, the thing about what position the body is in could be second-hand. She does play M-rated video games, but so do I and I'm squeamish. Or I could re-interpret her. I suppose I don't have to make her a "girly girl." Assuming that 80% of my readers are girls, I'm alienating about 50% of the people who could treat her as themselves-insert. The details that require her to be impractically dressed... There is a bit of emphasis on how she didn't plan to suddenly be in a different world. The hero shrugging off helping her is half because he's not that interested in what happens to her, and half because he sees her shoes and determines that she's helpless and he can't do enough to make a difference. The makeup is just a nice detail. She's going to become a vampire eventually, and I suppose I could completely cut the part about her knowing that her mentor's behavior towards his victims is unsettling.
Whilst all of the above may be factually correct, it's a work of fiction. Aren't we supposed to suspend our disbelief at such inaccuracies?
Yes, but I'm only willing to go so far. (Which admittedly is not as far as most people are willing to go.)
I suppose I could throw realism out the window since this is a "person sucked into a known video game" story, but I'm going for gritty. She breaks reality because she's not supposed to be there, but she doesn't have the full Mary-Sue package. I want her to be the type of person whose only advantage is that she can say what would have happened if she hadn't been there to screw things up. I realized that I had to include a time-traveling illusionist to tell one of the main characters that she needed to be rescued before time unraveled.
A profiler, crime scene analyst, or photographer might wear high heels. But regardless, anytime there is a body in the woods or some other place one would not wear heels, just have her switch to her slip-on loafers she carries in a bag in her giant designer purse.
Sherlock Holmes was merely a CONSULTANT of Scotland Yard, and never actually a part of the police/detective force. As has been said though, no actual CSI/etc... is going to be wearing high heels, three tons of mascara and a very revealing open shirt. Then again, they aren't vampires either, so do whatever you want.
Ooo! I like this. I often see the names of crime scene photographers listed on CSI schematics I have to translate, so yeah, that's a person with cause to be there and with cause to have an aesthetic opinion like the thought expressed in the OP's post. Also, this carries with it the benefit of not being too tied to the rest of the goings-on, the processing and later investigation of the crime scene itself. As a character, she would have more "space" to build her in other directions.
Might it be realistic to have her be an intern still, or perhaps so green that she doesn't carry an occasion bag for those situations? I said nothing about her shirt, which I imagine is a blouse that looks best when completely buttoned to the pit of her neck. I think I have to cut the jabs at her mid-calf skirt-length and shredded pantyhose. (The world that she got dragged into, as far as I can tell, the fashions are ankle-length skirt or pants, then suddenly leotards.) The makeup is just enough to smear, which I assume is one swipe of mascara and bottom-lid eyeliner. I want her backstory to be realistic according to a non-sexual baseline. I remember answering the door for some bothering religion person and exclaiming over her shoe choice.
I'm confused about this. You're saying that the heels will alienate them, or the lack of heels will? Or something else entirely?
Shredded tights... Why o.o? Anyway, the best course would be to have her be a photographer, maybe a hobbyist artist (you mentioned she could draw well). Just a note, usually mixing fantasy (vampires...) with another genre, like crime, doesn't work. Some are homogenous and can flow well, like fantasy/horror and such, but fantasy/crime just doesn't sound right. Just like horror/romance wouldn't really work.
I believe she's saying the heels would alienate 50% of them. Don't know where she's getting these statistics from though. Are you aware that 38% of statistics are made up on the spot?
She could just be someone who's creepily interested in crime scenes and listens to the police monitor so she can show up at them even though she actually works at arbys.
That kind of person would get kicked out, there is security. Lots of random people show up at crime scenes, they get held off by the policemen.
The shredded tights are a jab at tights. She would get a few runs after being dragged around by guys in armor. And I did make up the statistics. It's less genre-mixing and more that her life suddenly switches to fantasy when the story begins. How realistic would it be that a few private investigators are sharing an office and a secretary? She would be managing their paperwork and records, bringing tea to clients, so the way she dresses doesn't have to be practical. One or two could be a former cop, she would hear their war-stories. There are probably even some files for old unsolved murders that she would have seen while being a sounding-board.
Now I'm curious what you mean by tights, and why you're jabbing at them. Do you mean what Americans call stockings or panty hose, the lightweight things that run if you glance at them? Or the sturdier things, like dancers' tights or children's tights or, well, what Americans call tights? That's a side issue. I mostly posted to suggest that if she only has to turn up at the crime scene this way once, instead of habitually, how about having someone who's on the regular rotation get sick, so that she has to show up when she absolutely didn't expect to be working? Then she could be wearing whatever you want--especially if she's in a date's car so that she doesn't even have a spare pair of shoes in the trunk. I realize that that may also be unrealistic, but it at least narrows the unrealism to "what happens if the regular person and their backup are both unexpectedly unavailable?" rather than habitual work wear.
Is she working on a crime scene, or does she just bump into a dead body while doing something else? If the body was under the control of the police then she wold have to be somehow attached to law enforcement. But if she just ran into the body like on the way home from <insert random place> while off duty, she could be dressed up. And if she is a paper pusher with law enforcement, I can't think of any reason she would be unable to wear heels. As long as she is not one of the beat cops who regularly chase down perps. Also, possible jobs/ways she knows about the arrangement of the body: Criminologist (a professor of), analyst, sociologist focused on deviance and crime, or a watcher of Criminal Minds.
The jab at tights are anything itchy that I would have been forced to wear with a skirt while growing up. I probably mean "run when you look at them" since I think I started cross-dressing after some trauma involving being the wrong height/weight ratio to successfully wear them. I would have negative numbers on how long they lasted. I don't think she needs to actually see the dead body before the story begins, just be exposed secondhand. Her previous incarnation was some sort of junior crime scene reporter. I suppose I could go back to that, have her be a more practical girl that just happened to switch worlds while being dressed for court.
