Lucy and Michelle

Appearance: Lanky and thin, hunched, bad posture, messy dark hair, rarely grooms herself. Freckled face, wears glasses with thick black rims. Michelle's daughter Lucy is a teenage girl with Asperger's syndrome. Due to her condition, Lucy is socially stunted and has trouble interacting with others. She has difficulties identifying their emotions or "reading the mood" and has little tact and scarcely any innate understanding of how human relationships should work. She has no friends and spends most of her time coped up inside. She is aware of her condition and realizes she will likely never be able to form any meaningful friendships or relationships. This self-awareness in combination with the Asperger and hormonal puberty leads to frequent mood swings. For example, her feelings may quickly shift from absolute joy when watching her favorite cartoons to deep melancholy when the show ends, depression when she's introspective or autistic violent outburst when she has to do something she doesn't like or somebody challenges her set of values. Lucy is at the age where she's starting to explore her sexuality, which often leads to her asking her mother or any other people she knows very blunt questions regarding that topic.

Lucy has two joys in life; watching children's cartoons and playing the piano. Some of her favorite shows are Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon and Princess Tutu. She has musical hearing, knows the melodies by heart and often practices playing them on her electronic keyboard. She dislikes doing chores as she doesn't really comprehend give-and-take. She hates bathing (shampoo gets in her eyes). Lucy has terrible eating habits, she never really feels hungry and eating is a chore to her. She prefers plain and simple childish foods, her favorite meal is spaghetti with ketchup, she absolutely refuses to eat vegetables. The combination of her eating disorder and the teenage growth spurt result in a thin, lanky body with protruding ribs and almost nonexistent breasts.

Appearance: Slender with moderate bust, prim and proper, dark, straight hair, thin half-rim glasses. Michelle is Lucy's mom, conservative and deeply religious. She married right after finishing high school, but her husband divorced her while their daughter was still very young, after Lucy was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Michelle works as a secretary in a medium-sized company. Raising an autistic daughter as a single mother had never been easy for her, but the situation became almost unbearable when Lucy hit puberty. Her daughter's fits are getting progressively more frequent and violent, and Michelle sometimes can't help but lash back at her daughter due to the accumulating stress. Despite everything, Michelle loves her daughter dearly, but has a hard time understanding her condition due to her conservative catholic upbringing. Michelle has very little time for herself so she doesn't have a good idea of what she actually likes, but she enjoys watching travel documentaries and daydreaming about visiting exotic places. Cooking tends to calm her down, even though she mostly just cooks very simple dishes due to her daughter's eating habits. A few years ago, Michelle went on a week-long vacation to a spa resort alone, telling her daughter she's on a business trip. She felt terrible afterwards and had no real breather since then. Michelle often considers herself a bad mother, the feeling of guilt translates into her being very protective and confrontational when it comes to matters concerning her daughter.

At Michelle's recent consultation with her daughter's psychiatrist, the psychiatrist suggested that Lucy might benefit from participating in a sexual assistance program designed for individuals with disabilities, as it could help alleviate her mood swings and frustrations. Michelle was highly skeptical at first, both because of her religious nature and because the service is not covered by insurance, but Lucy's most recent outburst forced her to start considering it seriously. If Michelle opts to arrange a sexual assistant for her daughter, she will insist on being present in the room the entire time to oversee that the assistant worker stays strictly professional.