Portrait of a Character – Josie O’Connor (Jhasi Tantharis)
Jhasi Tantharis becomes Josie O’Connor and the result is glorious.
Origins
I wanted a pair of tragic figures for the HG Wells stories. Kevin O’Connor would be a widower, and Richard Daniels would be a womanizer who needed more out of life. Originally, the reader would never see Kevin’s dead wife, Josie. She didn’t even have a species to start out. But the more I thought about the delicacy and weirdness of the Aenar, the more I wanted Josie to be one of them.
Portrayal
Josie is played by former child star Ashley Olsen.
Between the Olsen twins, she’s tended to be the quieter one, and seems to stay out of the public eye more than her sister, Mary-Kate, does.
I wanted someone who would look like a waif but not anorexic, at least not at the beginning. Josie would start off as youthful and beautiful, the picture of health. But it all goes horribly wrong.
Personality
Friendly, personable and kind, Josie is a kindergarten teacher when she meets Kevin. She’s also a bit of a fashion plate – a strange thing for someone who is blind. But the Aenar reportedly have something of a sixth sense, so Josie is able to coordinate her rather flashy outfits.
Relationships
Kevin O’Connor
Josie’s sole relationship is with Kevin. According to The Point is Probably Moot, Candy, and The Honky-Tonk Angel, they meet at a party at his engineering firm, when Kevin, a new-quarter-teragram-sized part-Gorn, is dragged along to play wingman for his coworker, Archie Leach. Leach strikes out with a Trill, but Kevin connects with Jhasi. Mishearing her name, he calls her Josie. He thinks he has blown it. But she finds him charming.
He takes her to a ballgame for their first date. They get serious very quickly, and marry. But things go awry when she gets a diagnosis of a fatal disease, Piaris Syndrome. The illness is a degenerative one. But the worst part of it is at the very end, when she stops knowing him.
In The Point is Probably Moot, the Perfectionists’ temporal changes result in her getting a brief restoration to life. So she finally speaks in a story that isn’t a prequel.
Mirror Universe
I have never written a Mirror Jhasi/Josie.
But there is no reason why she can’t exist.
She would likely have never wed Kevin. And she might never have had an illness. An intriguing idea that I might explore one of these days.
Quote
“Listen,”I don’t want to be dead and I don’t want you to be gone from our marriage. Kindly do not misunderstand me. But I think, well, it’s an odd gift that you and I have been given here. I feel that we have a chance here. I suppose I have a chance to tell you what I would have always wanted to tell you, under such circumstances.”
Upshot
Much like Kevin Madden-Beckett in Fortune, Josie is a tragic figure. But she had a life before her illness. And she of course had a life even before her marriage. Neither should define her as much as I’ve let them. In order to know Jhasi Tantharis better, maybe I should write another prequel about her.
