Lookit Me And My Info-Posting
Yay, it's infopost season again! Meet my new girl, Gertrude Yorkes. She's fifteen years old and a sophomore, she hates long walks on the beach, and… alright, let's start over.
The Canon
Most of you should already know all this from solarhippie and ultron_junior, so I'll keep this short. Runaways is a Marvel comics series by Brian K. Vaughn and some other writers, which ran for three main volumes and some other one-shots around the Marvel universe. It deals with that age-old question ranked somewhere between "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" and "Why is there never food in the fridge no matter how many times you open and shut the door?" in terms of importance: What if your parents actually were evil?
Cue a dinner party at Los Angeles couple Geoffrey and Catherine Wilder's house, where five other couples and their kids show up for a night of food, drinks, and a super-fun ritual sacrifice in a private room they don't think the kids have access to. They'd be wrong there, because their kids - Alex Wilder, Nico Minoru, Chase Stein, Molly Hayes, Karolina Dean and Gertrude Yorkes - spot it all from a secret passageway, learn their parents are the head honchos behind a supervillain organization called the Pride, and that night, decide to run away from home. Along the way, they discover that they each have powers (or power-adjacent characteristics, at least) that their parents never told them about. As they evade their parents and the ancient giants their parents are working for, commit impromptu acts of vigilante heroism around the city, pick up some new members and occasionally take field trips to places like New York and the early 1900s, they use these powers to, uh, try not to die.
They're more or less successful. By which I mean that some are more successful than others.
Anyway.
The Girl
Gert, who for the purposes of this performance will be played by Mae Whitman with purple hair, is a snarky, jaded fifteen-year-old who's just like your typical teenager except that her parents are dead, she's spent the past few months on the run with a bunch of teenagers she doesn't know all that well, and she has a psychic link to an 87th-century dinosaur.
Gert is the Runaways' Lancer; she physically cannot hear a bad plan without critiquing it and she feels an intense compulsion to soapbox almost constantly. If Britta from Community had evil parents and dyed-purple hair and knew how to do things and thought slightly less of her looks, she'd be Gert. Sort of.
She's very smart and looks for tricks in things that other people tell her, because she's got trust issues like whoa. (To be fair, her parents were evil. And time-travellers. I'm not saying that time-traveller parents merit trust issues for life, but you'd think they'd at least tell you so you could, like, join them on trips to ancient pyramids and stuff.) She is not the biggest fan of authority, and in fact may be extremely rude to a number of teachers, for which I apologize. She adamantly supports whatever social justice causes she can get her hands on, and has done so since she was five years old and set all her friend Nico's meta for My Little Ponies free in the woods because "they didn't belong in captivity." These days, her causes are more along the lines of being a feminist and kind of a socialist and less about, you know, freeing plastic dolls. She can be a bit prickly and abrasive with all her passion, but she's got a good heart. She believes firmly in accountability and doing things now that you'll be proud of yourself for later, which, despite her insistence that playing hero is for kids, is actually a pretty heroic way of doing things.
Gert's coming from just after the first volume ends, at which point the Runaways' parents get killed and Captain America ushers all the kids (sans [Spoiler (click to open)]Alex, who turned traitor and died) into foster homes/boarding schools/whathaveyou. Even though she hates school, Gert picked the only place she could find that would allow her to bring her pet, and that's Fandom!
Oh, right, so: the dinosaur. Old Lace is the world's cutest seven-foot-long dinosaur ever, including future dinosaurs that do not yet exist. She is a deionychus, though Gert says velociraptor because Gert is wrong. Also, she and Gert have a psychic link; if Gert thinks a command, Old Lace does it, and if Gert were to, say, get an allergy attack and wind up incapacitated due to her bee allergy, Old Lace would too. Old Lace will generally be accompanying Gert wherever she goes so long as it's appropriate, and I'll indicate when she's around in narrative and with icons. Just look for the pretty, pretty dino.
Obviously, it goes without saying that Old Lace isn't going to be attacking anyone without player permission, but I will say it anyway. Old Lace isn't going to be attacking anyone without player permission. That was fun, right? She will, however, be sitting on couches and following Gert around and generally being a seven-foot-long obstacle in the middle of rooms. Sorry, Gert's roommate.
The Important, But Spoilery Bit
Remember up there when I mentioned that some of the Runaways are better at not dying than others? Well… Gert is really helpful as far as not letting other Runaways die. Unfortunately, this strategy isn't quite as effective when it comes to her own longevity, because she kind of winds up biting it at the end of volume two, issue eighteen.
So that's something to be mindful of if your characters are going to be interacting with her here in Fandom. She's got some time before that happens - it probably won't be the end of her junior year and she's coming here as a sophomore - but just be aware that if your character gets close with Gert, they may have to deal with fallout from that at some point.
Also, obviously, if your character knows how she dies for whatever reason, I'd appreciate it if Gert not find out just yet. I'm not necessarily opposed to her finding out in advance ever, because I honestly don't think it will screw up that much, but I'd like to hold off on the revelation for a while.
And now, the non-newbies!
Wesley Geoffrey Wyndam-Pryce (Angel)
- Is nineteen, an alumnus, and working at Angel Investigations in Los Angeles.
- Is under-played to the point that I forgot to include him in this infopost on the first go-round, oopsies.
- Is a Guns Akimbo-wielding Gentleman Snarker about to Take a Level in Badass.
- Speaks like a gazillion languages, is more than halfway fluent in Buffyverse magical whatnot, and has a bunch of swords for to hunt demons with.
- Is all gooey-eyed over the formerly-crazy Fred Burkle at the moment and is about to totally blow it. Sad.
- And afterwards will be a wreck and will also have no place to live, so this spring's gonna be a fun time for him!
- Is, uh, also going to bite it within the next couple years.
Christopher Andrew Brink (Dollhouse)
- Is sixteen, a junior and from Los Angeles.
- Is dating selfhelphero and is besties with ultron-junior.
- Is capable of advanced hacking and computer programming which can be rented out for plotty purposes, la la la.
- Is such an Insufferable Genius it's not even funny.
- Okay, it's pretty funny to me.
- Now has a shiny new robot dog named Broca II!
- Wears a dorky bracelet and has a Galaxy Quest tattoo on one of his ankles, like a nerd.
- Has a laundry list of phobias, including: rats and other rodents, the dark (especially when he's already stressed), wide open spaces (ditto), ladyparts, and being rejected by the friends he's built up since coming here.
- Has Asperger's and isn't really good at socializing.
- Is, however, very good at snarking and being disrespectful, which is kind of like being social except that it actively repels people.
- Is on his way to ending the world a little bit.
- Works at Stark Industries on Saturdays.
- Is also going to bite it within the next couple years! Gosh, I have a type.
Alexander Gideon Lightwood (The Mortal Instruments)
- Is seventeen, a junior, and from New York City.
- Is liarallmyown's best friend/adopted brother and has kind of a flirting/sometimes-kissing thing going on with myownface.
- Is a Shadowhunter, which means he's toned like whoa and has a ton of scars and tattoo-like marks on his arms and, oh right, is superpowered and fights demons and stuff.
- Has a bit of a crush on Jace, because Cassie Clare loves her some incest-adjacent-ness, and he thinks he's sneaky about it.
- Is not sneaky about it.
- Is no Clint, but can kind of kick ass with a bow and arrow all the same.
- Is Literal-Minded like whoa, and also has Big Brother Instinct to kind of a ridiculous degree.
- Does not actually walk around sleeveless, whatever the filming shots from the movie may imply.
- Works at Wellspring Arms and Meditation Center on Fridays.
April Roberta Ludgate (Parks and Recreation)
- Is nineteen, a townie working at Caritas, and from Pawnee, Indiana.
- Spends most of her time doing stupid crap with apocalipped or sometimes annoying bitten-notshy.
- Presents herself as an Emotionless Girl, and suffers from a severe case of Dismotivation.
- As of the day it rained pets in Pokéballs, now has an adorable three-legged pit bull named Cliff!
- Is Puerto Rican and can speak fluent Spanish.
- Can play drums! She plays a lot of Rock Band, okay.
- Can stare for a really long time without blinking because she likes to unnerve people.
- Likes animals, her friends, and sleeping. And that is about it.
- Works at Caritas on Saturdays.
Maxwell David Blum (Happy Endings)
- Is twenty-nine, a bartender working at the Devil's Nest, and from Chicago.
- Is a football-loving Straight Gay and a passionate Slacker.
- Has a tattoo of his Hebrew name on his chest, because… Max.
- In canon, also gets a tattoo of a local burrito place's logo in order to get free burritos for life, but that has not happened yet. One day, though.
- Will one day be going to Chicago to attend a wedding of two of his friends where the bride runs off with a guy on roller blades. Obviously he will need to bring other people from Fandom to witness this hilarity.
- Has scary accurate aim with a Nerf dart gun, and lacks the amount of shame that would discourage a grown man from Nerf-darting people from his balcony.
- Is still relatively new to the island and needs new friends!
- Works at The Devil's Nest on Tuesdays.
Michelle/Teacup/ @callsyapastries/tsonicscrewdriver
- I really am basically Scott Pilgrim.
- I'm twenty and a sophomore in college living in the Chicago area with a somewhat crazy roommate.
- Most of my time is spent annoying lockestheway or reblogging things on Tumblr or sometimes writing ill-advised Teen Wolf fanfiction that may or may not be Stiles/Lydia and somewhat epic in length. Shut your face.
- I also recently spent $60 in the FandomAid charity auction getting someone to write fic for me.
- so-hawkward enabled me. Shut up.
- I am shorter than all but probably two of you.
- I do not have a dinosaur, but I have a puppy and he's awesome so I win.
The Canon
Most of you should already know all this from solarhippie and ultron_junior, so I'll keep this short. Runaways is a Marvel comics series by Brian K. Vaughn and some other writers, which ran for three main volumes and some other one-shots around the Marvel universe. It deals with that age-old question ranked somewhere between "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" and "Why is there never food in the fridge no matter how many times you open and shut the door?" in terms of importance: What if your parents actually were evil?
Cue a dinner party at Los Angeles couple Geoffrey and Catherine Wilder's house, where five other couples and their kids show up for a night of food, drinks, and a super-fun ritual sacrifice in a private room they don't think the kids have access to. They'd be wrong there, because their kids - Alex Wilder, Nico Minoru, Chase Stein, Molly Hayes, Karolina Dean and Gertrude Yorkes - spot it all from a secret passageway, learn their parents are the head honchos behind a supervillain organization called the Pride, and that night, decide to run away from home. Along the way, they discover that they each have powers (or power-adjacent characteristics, at least) that their parents never told them about. As they evade their parents and the ancient giants their parents are working for, commit impromptu acts of vigilante heroism around the city, pick up some new members and occasionally take field trips to places like New York and the early 1900s, they use these powers to, uh, try not to die.
They're more or less successful. By which I mean that some are more successful than others.
Anyway.
The Girl
Gert, who for the purposes of this performance will be played by Mae Whitman with purple hair, is a snarky, jaded fifteen-year-old who's just like your typical teenager except that her parents are dead, she's spent the past few months on the run with a bunch of teenagers she doesn't know all that well, and she has a psychic link to an 87th-century dinosaur.
Gert is the Runaways' Lancer; she physically cannot hear a bad plan without critiquing it and she feels an intense compulsion to soapbox almost constantly. If Britta from Community had evil parents and dyed-purple hair and knew how to do things and thought slightly less of her looks, she'd be Gert. Sort of.
She's very smart and looks for tricks in things that other people tell her, because she's got trust issues like whoa. (To be fair, her parents were evil. And time-travellers. I'm not saying that time-traveller parents merit trust issues for life, but you'd think they'd at least tell you so you could, like, join them on trips to ancient pyramids and stuff.) She is not the biggest fan of authority, and in fact may be extremely rude to a number of teachers, for which I apologize. She adamantly supports whatever social justice causes she can get her hands on, and has done so since she was five years old and set all her friend Nico's meta for My Little Ponies free in the woods because "they didn't belong in captivity." These days, her causes are more along the lines of being a feminist and kind of a socialist and less about, you know, freeing plastic dolls. She can be a bit prickly and abrasive with all her passion, but she's got a good heart. She believes firmly in accountability and doing things now that you'll be proud of yourself for later, which, despite her insistence that playing hero is for kids, is actually a pretty heroic way of doing things.
Gert's coming from just after the first volume ends, at which point the Runaways' parents get killed and Captain America ushers all the kids (sans [Spoiler (click to open)]Alex, who turned traitor and died) into foster homes/boarding schools/whathaveyou. Even though she hates school, Gert picked the only place she could find that would allow her to bring her pet, and that's Fandom!
Oh, right, so: the dinosaur. Old Lace is the world's cutest seven-foot-long dinosaur ever, including future dinosaurs that do not yet exist. She is a deionychus, though Gert says velociraptor because Gert is wrong. Also, she and Gert have a psychic link; if Gert thinks a command, Old Lace does it, and if Gert were to, say, get an allergy attack and wind up incapacitated due to her bee allergy, Old Lace would too. Old Lace will generally be accompanying Gert wherever she goes so long as it's appropriate, and I'll indicate when she's around in narrative and with icons. Just look for the pretty, pretty dino.
Obviously, it goes without saying that Old Lace isn't going to be attacking anyone without player permission, but I will say it anyway. Old Lace isn't going to be attacking anyone without player permission. That was fun, right? She will, however, be sitting on couches and following Gert around and generally being a seven-foot-long obstacle in the middle of rooms. Sorry, Gert's roommate.
The Important, But Spoilery Bit
Remember up there when I mentioned that some of the Runaways are better at not dying than others? Well… Gert is really helpful as far as not letting other Runaways die. Unfortunately, this strategy isn't quite as effective when it comes to her own longevity, because she kind of winds up biting it at the end of volume two, issue eighteen.
So that's something to be mindful of if your characters are going to be interacting with her here in Fandom. She's got some time before that happens - it probably won't be the end of her junior year and she's coming here as a sophomore - but just be aware that if your character gets close with Gert, they may have to deal with fallout from that at some point.
Also, obviously, if your character knows how she dies for whatever reason, I'd appreciate it if Gert not find out just yet. I'm not necessarily opposed to her finding out in advance ever, because I honestly don't think it will screw up that much, but I'd like to hold off on the revelation for a while.
And now, the non-newbies!
Wesley Geoffrey Wyndam-Pryce (Angel)
- Is nineteen, an alumnus, and working at Angel Investigations in Los Angeles.
- Is under-played to the point that I forgot to include him in this infopost on the first go-round, oopsies.
- Is a Guns Akimbo-wielding Gentleman Snarker about to Take a Level in Badass.
- Speaks like a gazillion languages, is more than halfway fluent in Buffyverse magical whatnot, and has a bunch of swords for to hunt demons with.
- Is all gooey-eyed over the formerly-crazy Fred Burkle at the moment and is about to totally blow it. Sad.
- And afterwards will be a wreck and will also have no place to live, so this spring's gonna be a fun time for him!
- Is, uh, also going to bite it within the next couple years.
Christopher Andrew Brink (Dollhouse)
- Is sixteen, a junior and from Los Angeles.
- Is dating selfhelphero and is besties with ultron-junior.
- Is capable of advanced hacking and computer programming which can be rented out for plotty purposes, la la la.
- Is such an Insufferable Genius it's not even funny.
- Okay, it's pretty funny to me.
- Now has a shiny new robot dog named Broca II!
- Wears a dorky bracelet and has a Galaxy Quest tattoo on one of his ankles, like a nerd.
- Has a laundry list of phobias, including: rats and other rodents, the dark (especially when he's already stressed), wide open spaces (ditto), ladyparts, and being rejected by the friends he's built up since coming here.
- Has Asperger's and isn't really good at socializing.
- Is, however, very good at snarking and being disrespectful, which is kind of like being social except that it actively repels people.
- Is on his way to ending the world a little bit.
- Works at Stark Industries on Saturdays.
- Is also going to bite it within the next couple years! Gosh, I have a type.
Alexander Gideon Lightwood (The Mortal Instruments)
- Is seventeen, a junior, and from New York City.
- Is liarallmyown's best friend/adopted brother and has kind of a flirting/sometimes-kissing thing going on with myownface.
- Is a Shadowhunter, which means he's toned like whoa and has a ton of scars and tattoo-like marks on his arms and, oh right, is superpowered and fights demons and stuff.
- Has a bit of a crush on Jace, because Cassie Clare loves her some incest-adjacent-ness, and he thinks he's sneaky about it.
- Is not sneaky about it.
- Is no Clint, but can kind of kick ass with a bow and arrow all the same.
- Is Literal-Minded like whoa, and also has Big Brother Instinct to kind of a ridiculous degree.
- Does not actually walk around sleeveless, whatever the filming shots from the movie may imply.
- Works at Wellspring Arms and Meditation Center on Fridays.
April Roberta Ludgate (Parks and Recreation)
- Is nineteen, a townie working at Caritas, and from Pawnee, Indiana.
- Spends most of her time doing stupid crap with apocalipped or sometimes annoying bitten-notshy.
- Presents herself as an Emotionless Girl, and suffers from a severe case of Dismotivation.
- As of the day it rained pets in Pokéballs, now has an adorable three-legged pit bull named Cliff!
- Is Puerto Rican and can speak fluent Spanish.
- Can play drums! She plays a lot of Rock Band, okay.
- Can stare for a really long time without blinking because she likes to unnerve people.
- Likes animals, her friends, and sleeping. And that is about it.
- Works at Caritas on Saturdays.
Maxwell David Blum (Happy Endings)
- Is twenty-nine, a bartender working at the Devil's Nest, and from Chicago.
- Is a football-loving Straight Gay and a passionate Slacker.
- Has a tattoo of his Hebrew name on his chest, because… Max.
- In canon, also gets a tattoo of a local burrito place's logo in order to get free burritos for life, but that has not happened yet. One day, though.
- Will one day be going to Chicago to attend a wedding of two of his friends where the bride runs off with a guy on roller blades. Obviously he will need to bring other people from Fandom to witness this hilarity.
- Has scary accurate aim with a Nerf dart gun, and lacks the amount of shame that would discourage a grown man from Nerf-darting people from his balcony.
- Is still relatively new to the island and needs new friends!
- Works at The Devil's Nest on Tuesdays.
Michelle/Teacup/ @callsyapastries/tsonicscrewdriver
- I really am basically Scott Pilgrim.
- I'm twenty and a sophomore in college living in the Chicago area with a somewhat crazy roommate.
- Most of my time is spent annoying lockestheway or reblogging things on Tumblr or sometimes writing ill-advised Teen Wolf fanfiction that may or may not be Stiles/Lydia and somewhat epic in length. Shut your face.
- I also recently spent $60 in the FandomAid charity auction getting someone to write fic for me.
- so-hawkward enabled me. Shut up.
- I am shorter than all but probably two of you.
- I do not have a dinosaur, but I have a puppy and he's awesome so I win.
