Real and Fake

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.

AN: I did not really like the movie, but I did like the characters, so this is what I came up with.

Sometimes Claire Dearing really loves her new job; other times she really hates it; and it all comes down to her last name. Dearing. Now there is a word that is just one or two letters away from Darling; a very feminine and domestic last name. Claire hates it. It's so XIX century that it is obsolete, rather than funny, at least for her. Dearing. A last name that belongs to a woman who is a dear, a sweetheart, domestic, submissive – the complete little housewife package. Claire hates it. Both the last name and the whole concept of being a housewife – this just cannot be her.

Her sister is different; she had actually been able to fully pretend to enjoy being a housewife and a mother to the old man Mitchell until she stopped. She stopped, married a man who is 25 years younger than her ex-husband is, and has largely shoved Zack and Gray over to Claire. Just great. Claire had spent years in perfecting her career, in breaking out of the Dearing mould, in becoming the manager of JW, and now she has to deal with her family? WTF does she have to do that?

...Well, actually she does not, and so maybe she will not – she is an operations manager, with an entire park to manage, so maybe she will shove the boys over to some underling, the way their mother had sent them to her, and she is not even their mother – she is their aunt. The cool aunt, so said the boys, but that is because she is their only aunt, so she can be cool by default – but she is not their mother. Off to a minion...that is to say, an underling, they will go. Claire may be a Dearing, but she is not domestic – and sometimes she even believes that.

JW, now, may be fun on the outside, to visit, but on the inside, to run? It is a chimera, cough, a game park meeting scientific laboratory, and now, thanks to Mr. Masrani, of Masrani Corporation, it is also meeting big business. That is three very different directions, and since Claire is the one responsible for JW to run smoothly, sometimes she feels like she is driving a cart that is being driven by a bird, a crab and a fish, to use a metaphor. Separately, they can be handled easily, but when tied together, and still trying to go their separate ways? Claire has her hands full in getting anything down at all, and she has to do it while looking immaculate, for she is the operations' manager, she is largely in charge and is the captain of the good ship JW...plus Mr. Masrani, of Masrani Corporation (as well as of JW proper) likes it when she looks good and immaculate. Claire is not sure what to make of Mr. Masrani as a man, but as an owner she has no problems in knowing what needs to be done: he must be kept happy, and so happy she keeps him, especially since there might be further promotions and advancements in life if this done.

...Of course, as it has been said before, Claire does not like Mr. Masrani as a man – not really, but frankly, her choice of potential men in JW is limited. After all, there is Wu, who is so at home with all of this DNA and science that he comes across as being asexual, and then there is Owen Grady.

Thinking of Owen always makes Claire sad: here is this larger than life, manly man, with some very prominent sexual characteristics, cough (it is not as if she's a nun or married, thank you very much), and completely crazy. About JW's dinosaurs who are not really dinosaurs: Wu may be marching to his own drum most of the time, but he is not a liar: JW's dinosaurs are man-made, artificial.

Now, Claire can relate; most of the time she is quite pleased at managing the operations over at JW, and she is not some religious or scientific nut, not to mention the pay is very good, (especially for a single woman), but all the same... JW dinosaurs are artificial, manmade, rather like those stupid Teletubby or Tamagotchi thingamajigs that her nephews liked to play with when they were younger. Oh sure, they made demands like real pets, and they made noises and people pretended to care about them as if they were real, but they weren't. They were toys, not pets. Things, not animals, and for all of their attributes, this is what they are – the Indominus Rex in particular is not even a whole dinosaur!..

But Indominus Rex can be avoided, it, or she, are within her enclosure, and this is where she will stay, after she had eaten her sibling and all. Avoiding Owen is much harder.

Now, Mr. Masrani aside, Claire initially did not think that she would be avoiding Owen too much – after all, the man is quite handsome and you cannot truly call him stupid; rather it is something else: obsession.

Owen Grady is obsessed with his 'girls': he keeps on thinking that his raptors are human, or at least real. They are not. Oh sure, they're quite material, solid, and so forth, but so's Claire's own car, for example, and no one will consider it to be real in the same way that a human, a dog, or a tree are. The raptors and other dinosaurs on this island? They are closer to the car than to anyone else mentioned above, just flesh and blood, rather than metal and plastic. The Indominus Rex is a special case, but the other dinosaurs? Dr. Wu himself admits that all the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals of JW are chimeras, created from several kinds of DNA – hence this is why they are scaly rather than feathery.

And Owen Grady, a very intelligent, clever man, with a nice...appearance and a sweet temper, (most of the time), did not see that. To him, the raptors were real, were almost human-like, and Claire could not help but feel that there was something wrong with that picture. People should care about people, not dinosaurs, especially artificial ones!

(...Suddenly, the initial confusion as to why Mr. Grady is still simple is no longer confusing, but quite explainable, in a sad way.)

To make matters worse, Mr. Grady can be quite vocal and insistent about his P.O.V. whenever he is interacting with his coworkers and superiors. Mind you, some people, like Vic Hoskins, have been able to shut him off by being blatantly dismissive of his views...and now Owen Grady doesn't like them very much, and vice versa. And, it's not like she needs, let alone wants, to like her, but she needs him to continue to cooperate and to toe the party line, and not to undermine her authority in that stupid macho way, and – and being civil and polite with him helps Claire to accomplish this, so civil and polite with him she is...most of the time. Grady is not irreplaceable, but he is very much hard to replace – Dr. Grant had recommended him first and foremost, and Claire can see why...

...at least whenever he is not talking about the damn artificial dinosaurs as if they were real, not to mention almost people! Claire does not want to replace him, especially so soon before the opening date, (and she does not really like to fire people at all, BTW), but if he does not change his attitude, she will have to take steps and he will not like it, he will not! Claire may be in charge of an island park that is full of fake dinosaurs, but this does not mean that she is a fake businesswoman: if it will come to a confrontation between her and Grady, she will win. She will have to, for otherwise? It would mean her entire life had been based around fake values – and she cannot accept that.

...The I-Rex (Claire was not a religious person, but whenever she looked at it, or at her, the word 'abomination' came to mind) finally snorted and moved off; Claire exhaled. She did not know why she had this fascination with this dinosaur, but she knew one thing: she will quit this cushy job before she will be the first one to blink in their 'regularly-scheduled' staredowns.

End