Age: 22
Gender: Female (She/Her)
Field of Study: Climate Science
Physical Description: Glenda stands at an average height of 5'6" and weighs 149 pounds. Her build is curvaceous, but lacking in tone. She is white and has a smattering of freckles across her arms and cheeks. Her hair is dyed black with a prominent purple streak, and choppily cut, falling to her shoulders in a shaggy mop when she lets it loose, although generally she wears it in a messy ponytail. Glenda wears a lot of makeup, disguising her freckles with a foundation layer and framing her eyes with eyeliner and purple wings, as well as lip gloss and another purple streak down her bottom lip. Her eyes are blue. She has multiple piercings in both ears, including an industrial in her left and several helix in her right. Both lobes have plugs. Facially, Glenda's features are quite round and soft, in spite of her efforts to sharpen them up with her makeup.
Most of Glenda's wardrobe is black with the occasional splash of colour. She usually wears boots as opposed to sneakers, but otherwise does not have strong preferences, mixing and matching skirts and tights, tanktops, t-shirts, sweaters, and the odd jacket. On the day of the expedition, Glenda wore bootcut black jeans with thermal tights underneath, combat boots, a black sweater over a black tanktop with a red anarchy design, fingerless gloves with detachable mittens, a brown longcoat with a high, lined collar, a muffler, and a black toque.
Background:
- Glenda was born in London, England to Roy and Abbie, respectively an engineer and a firefighter. She was raised in England until the age of ten, when her parents decided to move to Canada to allow Roy to pursue an employment opportunity and a homesick Abbie to be closer to her family.
- Prior to the move, Glenda was a quiet and subdued child who only had a couple of close friends. She usually completed her schoolwork to a decent standard, but was never the top of the class.
- Leaving England was deeply disruptive to Glenda and she was reluctant to leave. She dreaded losing her few friends and being the person who stuck out in the crowd due to being both the new kid and from another country. She became very shy, almost to the point of out and out reclusiveness. Although her parents noted her difficulties, Roy was busy settling into his new job while Abbie was caught up reaquainting herself with her wider family. Meanwhile, at school, Glenda became isolated once the novelty of being new wore off, and her teachers were unable to coax her out of her shell.
- Fortunately, after some months of this, Glenda met her cousins Henrietta and Bradley, the children of her uncle Michael. Although they were both teenagers, five and three years her senior, they both took an immediate shine to her, including her in conversations and treating her like she wasn't just a child. Glenda warmed to them quickly and began opening up much more, as well as pestering her parents constantly about when she could next go and see uncle Mike.
- A particular bonding experience between Glenda and her cousins was music. Glenda had developed quite a broad range of interests in artists in England thanks to her dad being deeply in tune with the local musical scene. Alongside some more obscure artists, Glenda introduced her cousins to Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight, and was excited to learn that they knew of favourites like the Arctic Monkeys and Gorillaz. In turn, they shared with her many punk acts, such as Iceage, Against Me, and the Wonder Years. Bradley unsuccessfully attempted to lure Glenda into listening to Justin Bieber.
- Thanks to her cousins, Glenda became much more confident and expressive and was able to focus properly on her schoolwork, though she did not exactly transform into a socialite and still only had a narrow friend group. Her overall school performance improved by a significant margin, especially in the sciences, which she found a natural aptitude for now that she was concentrating on the material. As she grew older she became more immersed in the punk subculture shared by her cousins, at first simply drawn to the interests of two people she looked up to, but in time developing genuine appreciation for the counterculture and ideals of looking out for one another and trusting to community rather than government.
- One negative aspect of this was that Glenda developed a broader knowledge of social injustices and inequality. Although she felt better for being more informed, and it has allowed her to develop a keen interest in improving the status quo, she was and remains completely incapable of switching off from online, maintaining bad habits of scrolling endlessly through twitter feeds and clicking through every link she sees about negative events happening in the world, resulting in a feedback loop of anxiety. Glenda tells herself that she is keeping herself educated and aware, but at its worst this behaviour is little short of emotional selfharm, and her friends and family have been forced to out and out confiscate her phone to break the cycle on a number of occasions.
- Glenda's parents had and have mixed feelings about Glenda's involvement in the subculture. On the one hand, both were pleased about Glenda expressing herself and gaining friendships, on the other hand, her dad worries a lot about her difficulties switching off, while she and her mom have had sometimes fractious arguments about subjects like government oversight. Still, provided politics are off the dinner table, they generally all get along quite well and Glenda holds great admiration for her mother's bravery, though her firefighting career has now progressed to a desk job due to her age. Her dad and her bond over soccer, and they often watch Roy's hometown Norwich City play on television. Glenda considers herself a supporter of the club, but doesn't always follow them very intently due to the distance and difficulty finding their matches.
- Glenda has been in punk band called Placeholder Title since she was sixteen, acting as the bassist and secondary vocalist, as well as participating in the writing process of many of the group's songs. For the songs that Glenda takes the lead, the lyrics are based more around the spoken word and delve into long, sometimes silly stories. Placeholder Title score the occasional booking at small local venues, but are far from a big fish in the musical pond. At current, they are only active when she is on school holidays, although she continues to write music for the rest of the band's perusal.
- In high school, Glenda became involved with local volunteering thanks to Bradley's encouragement, something that she enjoyed thanks to the feeling of making a legitimate difference in people's lives. This increased passion led to her becoming more outspoken on the topic at school and amongst friends, although it took her some time to strike the right balance between persuasiveness and preachiness. Still, she managed to persuade some of her friends to help out on occasion, successfully tying it together with her ideals of support for one another and between communities and ultimately helping her feel a lot more positive about her impact.
- Glenda successfully graduated high school and decided that she wanted to pursue further education. She successfully applied for the University of Cascadia to study the sciences, with particular interest on the climate and possible future sustainable means of living. Fortunately for Glenda, her dad's successful engineering career was enough to finance college and he was willing to support her goals.
- Glenda acclimatised well to the student life and was glad to find more opportunities to meet like-minded people. She openly talks about her views with others, and if questioned, given Cascadia's corporate and military links, explains that she feels she will have more ability to effect change with a degree and with a view from the inside of how institutions like Cascadia operate. Even so, now that she is approaching the end of her university course, Glenda worries as to what the future will hold for her.
- Glenda attended the trip in the hopes that it would give her an opportunity to clear her head and refocus on her conservationist ambitions.
Assets: Glenda is anti-authority and wears this on her sleeve, which could cause others to view her more favourably as somebody who is unlikely to buy into the demands of those running the program. She also has a decent grasp of the arguments and rhetoric one could use to persuade others against simply following instructions and instead band together, although she lacks experience as an organiser.
Limitations: Glenda has a tendency to doom spiral when confronted with negative developments while simultaneously telling herself that she is just being realistic and remaining informed. This can often lead to her falling into a paralytic cycle of anxiety, unable to act and often unable to break herself out without external influence. She is slow to open up to anyone she does not know well, to the point of coming across as dismissive and rude. This will cause her difficulty with social relations and potentially even engender active hostility should she indulge in her more antagonistic behaviour.
Assigned Weapon: Bagpipes & Dirk
Conclusions: You know, I'm just glad that those bagpipes landed with somebody uniquely qualified to appreciate their dulcet tones. Stiff upper lip mate. - Hatfield