turnbuckle | App for mylittlejamjar

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Player Name: Indy
Player Journal:

butcherpete
Age: 21
Contact:

swirlix
Characters Played: Cecil Palmer (Welcome To Night Vale) |

nvcr

IN CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Gwendolyn Rose Madder
Canon: Pokemon
OU/AU/OC: OC, although the Capsized universe is heavily headcanoned to the point where it's perfectly logical to call it an AU.
Canon Point: After her trip to Driftveil
History: To really understand Gwen fully I need to give y'all a brief biography of her mother Sibyl first.

Sibyl was born in Driftveil City, a lively port town in Unova that kind of reminds me of Dallas if Dallas was a port town, and had a fairly normal childhood apart from the whole "psychic powers" deal. More specifically, she had an eidetic memory as well as the powers of retrocognition and some really weird dreams, but all this came out looking like to Gwen was a huge clusterfuck.

I  should probably note here that despite her mother's psychic powers, Gwen was born a perfectly normal human with no powers, as were her two siblings. Also, her biological father, her stepfather, and everyone else in her family were all baseline, superpower-less humans as well. Psychic powers are a thing that are uncommon, but not unheard of in the Pokemon universe.

Anyway, when Sibyl was a teenager, she often went traveling around with her older brother Dirk and her boyfriend (name intentionally left unknown). The three of them mostly just dicked around Unova during summer breaks and after leaving school, with Sibyl taking a particular interest in catching and selling/trading away shinies (while keeping one, a Solosis, for herself)

Eventually, like lots of teenagers, Sibyl found herself unexpectedly pregnant at a time in her life where she was totally unprepared for it. And unfortunately, like a lot of teenagers, her boyfriend was kind of a dick about the situation and made it clear he was going to bail on her not long after he found out.

They were going in between the coastal towns of Undella and Humilau searching for a much-talked-about purple, huge female Jellicent when Sibyl made the decision that would seal her fate.

Sibyl stopped being like a typical teenage girl when she decided that her answer to the latter would be throwing the asshole off of the raft and into an ocean full of screaming murder ghost jellyfish in the dead of night.

It's sort of implied that their relationship was rocky before that point and his attempted abandonment was the straw that broke the Numel's back, but still, damn gurl, murder probably wasn't the best solution to that problem, even if your victim was an asshole. Sibyl sort of regrets the whole murder thing and wishes it never happened, really.

Which makes sense, because premeditated murder really is one of the worst decisions a teenager can make in her life. Seriously, that's the kind of shit you can never really put behind.

A struggle ensued, with her boyfriend pulling her down with him and Sibyl being severely injured while her brother tried to rescue her. (She actually had to have her legs amputated later, which doesn't bother her much. Why the hell Gwen and her brother survived all of this while in the womb is a mystery.)

Since there were no witnesses, they decided to blame it on a Jellicent they had seen earlier, who, if she can be blamed at all, probably just ate the boyfriend's corpse after the teenaged piece of shit had drowned anyway.

God, teens are assholes, aren't they?

(I PROMISE THAT THE UNIVERSE THIS THING TAKES PLACE IN IS NOT DARKFIC OH GOD. The closest thing I can think of in tone to it is something like Persona 4-- aka horrible, horrible shit happens, but it's still optimistic overall.)

Now on to Gwen, finally!

Gwen was also born in Driftveil, shortly before Sibyl's 18th birthday and a little over five months after the fiasco involving her father's murder by mutant ghost jellyfish. She was followed about a minute after by a twin brother, Shay, who is and has always been the closest family member she has. Her formative years were pretty consistent with most children after Sibyl recovered from her injuries and moved back to her hometown, with a princess phase sometime between the ages of 3 and 5 (and she never quite grew out of her fascination with all things pink and sparkly), and plenty of playing outside with wild Pokemon.

When Gwen and Shay were around 2-3 years old Sibyl had mostly recovered from the physical side of her injuries, but was horribly depressed about the whole MURDER thing and frustrated with living with her admittedly rather overbearing parents. She decided to start traveling again, taking Gwen and Shay with her, relying on her Pokemon for protection, and eventually settling around the quiet Village Bridge. Here she met a thirtysomething widower named Jasper, an engineer from outside the region who had come to work in the emergent metropolis of Opelucid City, which was literally the next town over.

After a brief courtship, they married, Gwen and Shay had a new stepdad, and the family moved to Sinnoh with Jasper after his assignment was over.

When she was about six years old her parents signed her up for judo classes, mostly on account of her trying to tackle things and Pokemon and people on a near-constant basis.

THIS WOULD BEGIN A LIFELONG ROMANCE WITH GWEN AND ALL TYPES OF MARTIAL ARTS.

LIFELONG.

MARTIAL ARTS ARE HER TRUE LOVE.

SERIOUSLY SHE'S A FIGHTING-TYPE SPECIALIST WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT

Mainly judo but she also dabbles in other things.

Shortly before the move to Vermillion City in the Kanto region after Jasper was relocated once again, Gwen and Shay got a baby sister in the form of Marie. Well, okay, she's technically a half-sister, but a half's as good as a whole.

Gwen loves her to bits, even if Marie is a snarky butt who tends to get into the weirdest of situations.

Jasper, while a bit of a hardass, wasn't a bad father figure, and Gwen certainly seems to regard him as her father, calling him "dad" and everything.

Things continued as normal up until the age of sixteen when, as was the cultural norm, she and her brother Shay went on a journey throughout the Johto and Kanto regions together, catching Pokemon and generally dicking around doing adventure things. It was here that Gwen met her Heracross Blackberry, and the two are faithful friends to the end.

She still realized that she didn't really fit in with most "socially acceptable" folk when she had to go to college, and picked a major that didn't really have very many job opportunities. (I'm still not entirely sure which major, but as a Literature student I am kind of familiar with the concept.)

And by that, I meant that she realized she was put on this earth to BEAT THE EVERLOVING CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING THAT WOULD LET HER. As such, her young adulthood was filled with her taking jobs that would make this socially acceptable, which usually meant she worked as a bouncer in a variety of establishments.

Roughly three years before the fic she's in started, she decided to bite the bullet and become a professional MMA fighter. Human sports aren't nearly as popular as Pokemon things in her world, but they still have their fans- so while she wasn't exactly rolling in dough, she could still support herself.

A little after this she met her current girlfriend, Julia, who works as a tattoo artist in Kanto's largest city, Saffron. They've been dating for roughly eight months and recently moved in together when the fic starts. She's had a number of other relationships before, but none of those ladies were exactly relevant.

Her mother went missing a couple of months before Capsized starts, which caused her teenage sister to freak out quite a bit. They eventually found out via their stepfather who was again working in Unova that she was there in search of the purple Jellicent from her childhood, who had apparently again been scapegoated into another murder she didn't commit. She was due to be killed and, not wanting to see the poor creature suffer for someone else's misdeeds, Sibyl had set out to capture her before anyone else did.

Not knowing her motives for her mother's disappearance, Gwen took Marie and the two sisters set out to find her.

Personality: Most of this is covered in the Strengths and/or Weaknesses section, but I've got some miscellaneous neutral bits of her personality to dump here!

While Gwen is very much the most outgoing out of all her siblings, she's still pretty demure. At the same time, she's very up-front with how she feels toward most people--if she doesn't like you, don't expect much more than unenthusiastic basic civility.

There's also a dash of girlish whimsy that is inherent in being Gwen. Like I said before, while she mostly grew out of most of its excesses after she finished her childhood, she still has a very pronounced love for things like frills, bows, sparkly dresses, pretty shoes, fashion in general really, adorable critters, and luxurious hot nice-smelling bubble baths. It's also reflected in her choice of Pokemon: while she's a Fighting specialist, all of her Pokemon are either graceful (Mienshao) or, more commonly, cute and quirky (Heracross, Breloom, any Pokemon she gets after the canon point I'm taking her from)

(Fun tidbit: at age 6-7 she had a small collection of My Little Blitzles, which is sort of like the Capsized universe's equivalent of My Little Pony, that she later sold as a teenager.)

She is a fucking princess. A badass warrior princess, which is one of the best kinds.

She's also fairly thick-skinned (unless the person saying hurtful things is someone she really cares about), although people saying things about others is an entirely different matter. (See Strengths for details)

As explained in the Strengths section, she's a protector, not just a warrior.

Like her stepfather, she can be quite stern and a bit of a hardass when dealing with people working under her, who are supposed to be her students, or who are just plain incompetent, but mostly fairly jovial with equals. Unlike Jasper, she isn't nearly as snarky.

Strengths: Gwen's most obvious is that she's, well, really physically strong and astonishingly well-coordinated. This makes her good at things like sports and manual (well, hoof-ual) labor, and especially fighting. She'll have some trouble getting used to her new equine form and how it works, but don't expect that to stop her any.

She's also very self-reliant, dependable and protective of others, which sort of was the natural consequence of being the oldest child in a family where all the adults tend to be out doing their own thing.

(While Shay is technically the same age as her, or really, only younger than her by a minute tops, he still fit the role of "younger sibling" rather well while they were growing up. He'd been the more sensitive and socially awkward one since they were kids, and only really grew out of it in his late teens after leaving high school.)

It's also because both her and her siblings probably had their share of bullying in their youth: Gwen herself for not really conforming to gender norms (and for actually being gay, because teens are assholes), Shay for his awkwardness and Marie for not really conforming to gender norms and for having a disease that gave her all the resilience of a toothpick.

As such, she's fairly open-minded about most things.

Gurl also has some serious self-discipline and diligence, which is the natural result of spending twenty fucking years, most of them your formative years, in martial arts training.

Weaknesses:

Okay, remember that episode when Applejack tried to get all of the things done for applebucking season without asking for help and it failed spectacularly? Like her, Gwen is quite willing to put others' needs before her own, but not so much inclined to admit that she needs help from her peers when things get out of hand. (Although she will defer or ask help from someone she deems superior to herself or considers an authority in any way) Without Shay, who's more emotional and willing to admit his own weakness, as a balancing factor, it's probably going to be a while before this passes.

The other is that Gwen's sense of honor and principles often act as a double-edged sword, making her stubbornly try to stay honorable even when everyone around her is fighting dirty. Or hell, STUBBORNLY TRYING TO DO THE NOBLE AND/OR HONORABLE THING EVEN THOUGH IT REALLY HAS NO BENEFIT OR MAY EVEN BITE HER IN THE ASS LATER.

This kind of gives her a bit of a breakdown beyond her canon point, since she's understandably pretty horrified at Sibyl's revelations and feels bitter and lied to and betrayed and hurt about the whole thing, but also feels that her hand is forced in helping Sibyl (and by extension working alongside her), since it's technically to make sure that the queen Jellicent doesn't suffer the consequences of someone else's misdeeds. Even though Sibyl has no intentions on turning herself in.

Really, who am I  kidding; she's basically Ned Stark if Ned Stark were reincarnated into a modern woman from an alternate universe with battle monsters and then turned into a pony against her will.

("If a king sentences a pawn to death, he should carry out the sentence himself." "Oh well, checkmate.")

I can only hope that this girl doesn't find herself beheaded here.

Finally, saying that she has a "passion"   for sparring and fighting is rather euphemistic. Really, it's more like an addiction. AS IN, SHE IS A STRAIGHT UP BLOOD KNIGHT. SHE WILL SUFFER FROM DEPRESSION AND WITHDRAWAL IF SHE RUNS OUT OF THINGS TO FIGHT OR TRAIN TO ONE DAY FIGHT.

PS: She also has no fucking idea how biology works in the real world or in Equestria, being born into a universe with an entirely different set of wildlife. As such, she'll refer to most creatures as something akin to their Pokemon counterparts, if any, for a while.

All her strengths and weaknesses put together basically mean that if she had been born in a different century (and of a different gender, but she likes being a lady) she'd be a model knight/samurai/honorable historical warrior of your choice, but probably wouldn't live terribly long. Okay, maybe not a real samurai, but perhaps one of those super rad Pokemon Conquest samurai.

Possessions:

Her Heracross, Blackberry, which is cutesified into an adorable little stag beetle
Her Mienshao, Mother-of-Pearl (or just Pearl), who is now a beautiful ermine/mink/ferret/fancy mustelid of your choice.
Her Breloom, Herschel, who is now a tiny green wallaby
Some Chesto berries (which are berries that you eat to prevent yourself from sleeping) in a plastic ziploc bag
A super size Pumpkaboo doll that her girlfriend bought for her (not ponified)
I'm just going to buck with the trend of bringing the clothes by having her show up naked. Because naked is awesome.

Pony/Animal Type: Earth Pony! Pegasus just doesn't seem to fit her, and it wouldn't make sense for her to be a unicorn or something else. She's also very physically strong and sturdy, a trait that seems to be linked to earth ponies.
Cutie Mark: A pair of clashing silver-white swords
Pony Picture: It's in the icons (never mind the accidental blank flank in one). She's a bit on the petite side height-wise in this form, although she has some very impressive equine musculature for such a little pony. Given that she was a muscular (not toned, srsly muscular) woman in her human form, I kind of wanted to carry that over.

Also, she doesn't really wear the Alice band her generator icons have; she's more likely to wear flowers (real or artificial) in white or varying pastel colors. Both her mane and her tail are a lightish teal/cyan color with white highlights, and both are cut pretty short.

She had brown hair in her human form, but I just went for teal here since 1) it looks prettier with the pink because it's COTTON CANDY COLORS, and 2) her eyes in her human form were teal, so, you know.

SAMPLES
First Person: [VISUAL/ACTION]

[Oh, what's this? There's a little, if very STRONG and chiseled-looking, cotton-candy colored mare situated outside Sugarcube Corner this afternoon. Those of you in or near Sugarcube corner can certainly try talking to her in person, but for everyone else, here's the power of video magical scrolls!]

Alright. I have absolutely no idea where my sister went, or why I'm a weird-looking Ponyta right now. I guess I could chalk it up to some really odd lucid dream I'm having, but at this point, I think I'm willing to cast aside any laws of reality I still believe in.

I can't exactly say it's bad, though. It kind of reminds me of when I was six and still had this My Little Blitzle collection, I mean, everything's just too adorable for words.

[...there's a moment of realization as she looks down at herself.]

...wait, where did my pajamas go?

Third Person:

Things were quiet. Far too quiet, if we were going to go by the old cliches. After the initial shock of being a Ponyta (sorry, pony- the word was still foreign in both Gwen's head and mouth) had worn off, she was left with a daily routine that mostly involved her earning whatever she could by doing odd jobs around town, and then spending the rest of her days in quiet, adorable bliss.

Which was all well and good for most people, she supposed, but terrible for a young lady with an unquenchable warrior spirit.

And to be perfectly honest, having nothing to do left her with an empty sort of feeling that gnawed at her bones. Luckily, someone had the heart to tell her about the local dungeon. And with a wonderful opportunity like that for a pleasant scrum, well. Who was she to turn down an opportunity to beat the crap out of every single creature she could? She entered the dungeon with a deadly stride and a sense of purpose; already she could feel the warmth of her blood pumping once again and the intoxicating surge of adrenaline she'd become so horribly addicted to.

It was time to slay some yogurt zombies.