Mandy Lake (from War of Joy)

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Mandy Lake (69)

Project: Nighttime soap (War of Joy)

Known as: Mandy

Real name: Amanda Roldan Lake

Group affiliation: Lake family

Physical description: Seventeen-year-old Mandy is a striking young woman who carries herself confidently. She has shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes.

Personality: Usually, Mandy is quietly confident. She seems to have inherited her father’s even-keeled nature but not his artistic emotional excesses. She is popular at school and a good student. She can be counted on to keep her cool and more than a few fellow students seek her advice.

Unfortunately, she also has a dark side. While calm, she has a certain emotional detachment. Secretly she enjoys stirring the pot and has a number of alternate social identities to reveal secrets and start conflicts between her fellow students. She can be quite devious when she feels threatened – not that you’d be able to tell (she is too careful to maintain her crafted public face).  Nothing so dramatic a split personality, but she does tend to dissociate her social media identities from her core identity, and the harm she does seems surreal to her. It’s as if she’d directing an on-line play while living her real life separately. More bored and immature than evil, she will be challenged if she ever has a moment where her underhandedness is uncovered, or if she really impacts someone she cares about.

History: Amanda is Joy and Thomas’ second child, born some years after her sister Melody. Despite being the baby of the family, she feels a bit ignored as her sister tended to be more of a dramatic-attention getter. It is likely her dynamic with her sister that caused her secret life as a button-pusher. She secretly admires and is intimidated by her sister and it helped her address her insecurities that she could manipulate her sister into having emotional reactions (which in turn made her less intimidating). She found that she could do this with many people which further helped address her sublimated feelings of insecurity.

It is important to her to be liked, so it would be a big life-changing shock if some of her under handedness was uncovered. Thomas would be surprised and extremely disappointed, for example, which would give Mandy a very new perspective (she is very tight with her father). How much of her deviousness is a teenager still developing empathy vs. a real problem remains to be seen.

She and Chase are seeing each other (he is very smitten with her; and she might be with him). They are keeping it a secret due to the tensions between their families. At least, he is keeping it a secret for that reason. She has another reason to keep it secret – she is also seeing Chase’s sister Char (who is also very smitten – and again, the feeling might be mutual). This is not a case of Mandy manipulating people; she feels drawn to both of them and isn’t at all sure how to handle it.

Some secrets and points of drama we may or may not encounter:

• Given that Mandy herself has some secrets, she might get out maneuvered by another person who likes to stir up trouble anonymously on social media.
• Mandy’s “play” might have major real-world consequences (perhaps contributing to a suicide). This will be a wake-up call that her games aren’t so innocent.
• The Char/Chase situation is a bubbling cauldron. Whether the discovery would split the twins or lead to some sort of understood sharing is yet to be seen (I think Char could handle the latter; I’m less sure about Chase).
• Mandy will still mess with her sister but when Melody is suspected of arson, they will close ranks.

Role in the narrative: Mandy started out as another goody-good in my head, but dramas need, well, drama. Most people are fairly dysfunctional in their teenage years and exhibit cruelty and insecurities that will be unrecognizable as adults. I’m hoping Mandy can be basically a good person who has some lessons to learn.

Abilities: Good student, plays social media like a violin…and plays the violin like a violin, as it turns out.

Inspirations: Various 90210 characters have had Mandy moments (e.g., Kelly Taylor had moments of being mean but turned out to be a good egg).