STEFANA RANIERI
(Picture courtesy of Olga)
Name: Stefana Ranieri
Date Of Birth: October 12th, 1991
Starsign: Libra
Stefana is the guitar player for Rebel Records' rock act "Diablo", soon
coined by the press as being the group's "Little Piece of Hell." Fiercely
possessive of her brother Luca's actions and of
Diablo's success, Stefana is resentful, angry and confrontational to most
people in every day life. Despite playing with Diablo, she despises both
Madeleine and Clay,
who consider her a petulant brat, and although she is extremely talented,
her performances are often spasmodically brilliant and overshadowed by her
extra-curricular concerns.
Stefana has lived a chequered life. At just fourteen she was kicked out
of her first High School for fighting and causing trouble, and at nineteen
she dropped out of her second school just before finals, preferring to quit
rather than fail her subjects. Her relationship with her mother was always
poor but this action incited Bianca Ranieri to kick her eldest daughter out
and Stefana spent some time staying with Marissa's
family before the two girls got a place of their own. Bianca's rejection
of Stefana runs deep, since not only does Stefana hate her mother with a
passion, her dependancy on amphetamines began not long after she was kicked
out of home. Stefana is extremely bitter about the way she was treated, and
in particular about the fact that Bianca pretends she does not even have
a daughter, erasing Stefana's memory completely from her life. Stefana's
relationship with her father was always a positive one, but he died when
she was thirteen of a heart complaint and his years of spoiling his only
daughter have left their mark also on her character. Stefana often does her
best to control everything Luca does, simply because she is afraid that he
will find someone else to spend time with and will shut her out of his life.
Luca's easy-going nature tolerates Stefana's brattishness fairly well, but
even he is unaware of how deep his sister's problems run. Much as she loves
her brother, Stefana also resents it when he "plays father" in her life,
claiming that she is old enough to make her own decisions and that she doesn't
need anyone running around after her.
Only Marissa knows that Stefana is addicted to amphetamines and, out of
misguided friendship, has kept the secret. Stefana's behaviour when sober
can be petulant, angry and ruthless, but when she is using the drug she can
be dangerous - not only to herself but to other people. Her constant need
for cash-flow and her resentment for Jewel's success entices her to enter
into a cash-for-sabotage agreement with Rory Llewelyn, her business agent,
and she rarely considers the consequences of her actions, often putting others'
lives in danger without really thinking it through. Stefana develops a particular
hate for Cynthia and, upon discovering her secret
sets about trying to destroy her. Stefana is a fairly ruthless character,
especially when driven on by the drugs, but she draws the line at actually
allowing anyone to be killed and because of this she intervenes when she
feels Sirena's son is under threat, even though she hates Sirena intensely.
Stefana is really a very lonely character, trapped in a world of drugs
and with noone to really confide in other than the ever-worried Marissa.
It is partly this which makes her fall in love with Jewel's road manager
Aaron Pelligrini, an attraction borne out of
the simple fact of him remembering her name, but that grows to such a pitch
that it becomes almost an obsession. Her devotion to Aaron means that she
will consider almost anything to get Copper out
of the picture, yet Aaron is entirely ignorant of his friend's darker side,
and treats her much as he would any of his other female friends.
Though she wears a lot of black and red, Stefana is not really gothic.
She takes her image very seriously, taking pride in being the "angry" member
of Diablo and always keen to flaunt her star status whenever she can. She
is also a smoker, and enjoys lighting up in places where it is forbidden,
just to annoy the management. Despite all of her malicious tendancies, however,
she is genuinely fond of Marissa, and stuck up for the girl at school when
kids picked on her about her diabetes. Their friendship is a mystery to
everyone around them, but of all people it is Marissa who Stefana trusts
the most.
Stefana is an intelligent character, despite her academic failure, but
most often she uses her intelligence for bad means and often allows her
anger and resentment to be manipulated by conniving brains such as Rory Llewelyn
(Riot) and Phoebe Asche (Rapture). She is determined that Diablo should be
number one at all costs, and her pleasure at Diablo's success is often marred
by her anger when Jewel seem to be one step ahead.