Roger Mezzini

Roger Mezzini is a police officer working primarily in Brooklyn, with some assistance in the Shao Pai Long Stakeout and the Miyamoto case. From the third chapter on, he is the boyfriend of Edward Byrd.

Profile
Roger was born to a very traditional Italian family in New Jersey and grew up surrounded by the culture, which has left him bilingual and familiar with the traditional cooking. The close ties to old-world sensibilities also left him very insecure of his orientation and rather closeted until long after he graduated from high school. When he was 15, he spent a lot of his year as part of a trio of students who secretly bullied male students they deemed effeminate.

This went on until the TV series Dragonball began airing in his junior year, which turned him into a huge fan, with a lot of his interests being comics and anime well into college. While it made him more reasonable as a person, it took over his life for a few years. He's since been reluctant to talk about his early life because of the hypocritical nature of the bullying, and of the fact that he still has a secret Dragonball collection. His hiding of his past has led a few to think he had a problem with criminal behavior or substance abuse. He lives comfortably in a bachelor's pad in Brooklyn.

He joined forced with an investigator in Nassau County, Dr. Edward Byrd, when the first Miyamoto detective murders occurred. After some months, he came to develop a crush on the doctor, one which remained very contained until a successful dinner meeting with him. The two began dating the day after, with Roger still working in Brooklyn full time.

Personality
Roger is very energetic and appears to be permanently peppy, always making himself busy with something even if he's off-work. On low notes, he's very unsure of himself and highly nervous, and while it's hard to seriously cut him, he practically becomes a sad puppy when emotionally wounded. He's got a habit of being touchy and a big hugger with friends, and gets a little insulted if someone is snide about the body contact. Of course, with Byrd, he's very affectionate and doting of him, sometimes even getting rather protective of him.

He also hates appearing messy or ungroomed, and when off-duty, always ensures he's well-dressed even when he's just at home.

Physical Appearance
Roger is tall and rather well-built, keeping himself toned for the more strenuous parts of his career. His hair is kept very short and slicked back, aside from a few loose strands. He appears slightly unshaven most of the time and tends to style it into a slight soulpatch. He's also never seen without his glasses.

Design & Conception
Roger was originally created in 2010 as Roger Rossi, for a giant robot novel Fauna was working on called Super Defender Gigan-X. Roger would be 22 and the captain of a team of three pilots, his love interest a gypsy leader, with the team fighting against a megalomaniac using an android girl to brainwash North America into a new war. His appearance in the book was reconsidered after he became a regular Westbury Detectives cast member, as Fauna considered it would be too jarring.

Roger's role in Westbury Detectives nearly went to a character named Eric Chiang, considered to be Byrd's lover from before the start of the series, but Fauna considered having Byrd struggle to find a love interest more interesting. He also considered having Roger turn Byrd down and go on to date Meifun, but this was rejected for a number of reasons, including the ten year age gap between Meifun and Roger, the fact that Roger was conceived as a gay man for Gigan-X, and how Fauna liked Byrd too much to have him be snubbed.