Loving Family in search of home...
I created this pair of characters for a pre-apocalypse game that died a somewhat unusual death, and happened to take a look at it again this morning, I felt kind of bad about them being left in limbo and decided to edit the RTJ material and ask if anyone would be willing to take them in.
Character name: Justin Grant Wrangell
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Appearance: Justin has a slightly pudgy face with a full black beard and mustache, he wears his hair short and keeps his beard trimmed with scissors but is not obsessive about his features. His eyes are brown, but lively and sparkling, constantly with the impression that he has just remembered a joke which was funny but not appropriate for the present circumstance. His nose is Greek in profile though a touch flat and narrow for that type. His skin is Caucasian and pale, little trace of the tan that is growing more common.
Justin wears bluejeans, and a tan windbreaker over a white T-shirt, with a tough pair of steel toed work boots, black. He stands 5'10' and is starting to run to fat, though it is clear that he has muscle under the flab. He weighs in at 16.78 stone but more than 80% of that is bone, muscle, and sinew. His hands are those of a working man, someone who uses tools and not a computer, and he is constantly streaked with ash and soot.
(mmr301)
Occupation: Before the Colapse Justin was the senior store manager at a supermarket. Now he has fallen back on his hobby to make his living, working as a blacksmith in an abandoned auto shop.
History: Justin was born in a town in Kansas that you probably have never heard of called Bushong. He was one of only 6 kids in town, only one of which was his own age, namely Becca Rachel Brown, the town's only black child from it's only black family. His grandparents never approved but his mother and father were cool with the two of them being best friends, and over time they became more than that. They kissed for the first time at 12, and came out to their parents at 15. Justin's mom and dad took it a lot better than Becca's dad did, but after he and Justin got finished beating the piss out of each other he told Justin that if he swore he would always fight that hard for his relationship with Becca and never lay a hand on her in anger he would bless their union and give his little girl away at the altar when they both were 18 and graduated from high school. Justin's Grandparents on the other hand took it less well than either immediate family: calling him things like a 'miscegenator' and 'race traitor', but that was not terribly unexpected. He disowned them and they him and they did not speak to each other for over a decade.
The next three years were hard for the couple, they got ambushed and beat up three or four times, though the fourth time doesn't really count because Justin was on his way back from baseball practice and took an oak bat to the head and groin of the leader, after which the physical harassment came to a crashing halt for some strange reason. The verbal harassment however continued unabated and both of them marked off the days until they would head to college in on of the more liberal northern states while they also yearned ardently for the much closer day when Becca, who was far more devout as a Christian than Justin, would have a wedding ring on her finger and they could finally have full sexual contact. Justin worked under the table on weekends doing residential construction in the suburbs of Wichita, and by the time Graduation rolled around had saved enough to buy the Brilliant Yellow Diamond Becca had her heart set on in the Emporia jewelry store.
The wedding occurred on a brutally hot day at Becca's church, since she was a regular churchgoer and Justin's family: Weren't. They had wanted to have the wedding outdoors but, well, when it's 100 in the shade you move inside where it's air-conditioned. Becca's one surviving grandfather and all 11 of her aunts and uncles and their families were there, but almost no one from Justin's side of the family was invited, or came if they were. The groom's side was not empty though, Justin had made many friends working in construction and they and their families made a brave showing for him, even if some of the elderly churchgoers were heard to remark that it was the largest concentration of sp---s, ch---s, and n-----s they had ever seen in one place. Very fortunately the bride and groom were out of earshot and were only told about this by Justin's parents seven years after the fact. Their honeymoon was a road trip checking out the four colleges that had offered them scholarships and they settled on U of M in Ann Arbor MI.
The next four years were long and hard. They worked a succession of crappy jobs to pay their rent and went to class but they made it through, Justin with an Bachelor's degree in Business Management. That was when their lives took a hard left turn: as out of nowhere they were called to the reading of a will in Buffalo NY.
It seemed that Becca's Grandfather had had an estranged brother, who had made himself quite wealthy investing in foreign business enterprises and who had outlived most of his children and other relatives, including his brother. He had therefore apportioned his estate to his surviving relatives and a few select charities, including a foundation to provide scholarships to worthy inner city youth. However the thrust of this for Justin and Becca was that they were to be provided with one of Mr Brown's several dozen houses that he had bought on speculation and an inheritance in stocks, jewelry, and bonds of 40 thousand dollars after deducting a precisely valued cash award for paying for death duties and the first year's taxes.
Character name: Becca Rachel Wrangell
Age: 27 (For 2 more weeks.)
Gender: Female
Appearance: With an oval face and broad nose Becca is a classic example of the African American phenotype. Her nappy black hair is always puffed out in a broad Afro except when she is actually at work, at which point she pulls it back in a kind of kinky haired pony tail equivalent and covers it with a snood. Her typically negroid nose is slightly crooked, the legacy of a savage beating she took when she was 15, but this only serves to accentuate her beauty, giving her face that critical element of imperfection that prevents it looking artificial and inhuman. Her eyes are perforce dark brown, as with almost all African Americans, but they have a greenish undertone that shows strongly in some lights. Her teeth are large square, and perfect, brushed thoroughly morning and night every day with fluoride toothpaste for her entire life and given dental treatments regularly since her adult teeth came in. Her wide dark pink lips are eminently kissable and look great no matter what she is doing from whistling to even eating, which on most humans inevitably looks disgusting but somehow she manages to make look refined and elegant.
Her typical attire is homemade nurse's scrubs but when she wants to look dressy she wears golds and reds, her tastes running to things that would not look wholly out of place on a 1960's jazz singer yet are not truly retro being very 'classic'. She stands five foot four inches, and weighs in at 152 pounds six ounces due to never really having been able to take off the baby weight from her four kids, but it does not look bad on her, just puts some nice curves on her previously somewhat anorexic frame. At first she tried to stick to a killer diet regimen to get it back off but her husband Justin convinced her he liked her better when she was not skeletal, so now she's cool with it. (She would like to tone her abbs some though, she just can't find the time.)
(fmb015)
Occupation: Both pre and post quarantine Becca has worked as a nurse at a local primary care physician's office. She sometimes worries about the fact that her children are being raised by a nanny and tutors but she can't see giving up her career for the endless drudgery of being a housewife, even if it would mean more time with her children.
History: Like her husband Justin Becca was born and raised in the tiny collapsing town of Bushong Kansas. Well, born is not accurate, she was BORN at the maternity wing of Wichita General: but from 5 days old until she was 18 she lived her whole life in Bushong and environs. She grew up with the immense burden of being the only black child in an overwhelmingly white town and an even more overwhelmingly white state. Her father always told her that she had to be 'a Credit to her Race' and drove her relentlessly with both praise and punishment to achieve more than those around her. However even he allowed her enough time to be herself and develop a personality outside of her identity as a 'woman of color', and though he was a total hard-ass she loves him for having helped her to achieve her full potential and become a self aware and self realized woman.
The greatest pain in Becca's life is that she never knew her mother. Becca's father described her mother as "a beautiful Nubian goddess whose smile could make the moon outshine the sun", but for reasons that no one seems to understand her mother packed her suitcase and drove off for parts unknown when Becca was barely weaned. There have been hundreds of theories advanced by Becca's classmates and confidants over the years as to why and where she went, some of them quite cruel, but Becca's private theory is one she has wrestled with herself, postpartum depression. A clue dug up during a project in junior year history class and her medical training from college gelled for her when she was weaning her first child Kendra, and she found herself thinking of taking the brand new ruby red hunting rifle her husband had given her and shooting both little Kendra and Herself in the head. She fought the urge down, but it reminded her of an anomalous item on the Emporia police blotter from the week her mother was reported to have disappeared: it said that 500 units of sleeping pills and fifty does of fluoxetine were missing from the pharmacy after a break in on the night after her mother vanished. Did her mother perhaps break into the pharmacy, steal sleeping pills and anti vomiting medications, and drive her car some where to die of an overdose of sleeping pills? Another news item, far more recent, also is connected in her mind to these events: when Wheeler Rock Quarry was being drained to build a shopping mall a car with a female skeleton in it was pulled from the depths of the quarry. The police investigated the crime as a homicide, so most of the details were not made public, however Becca is almost certain those bones are her mothers: but the idea of knowing her mother hated her enough to give in to the postpartum depression and kill herself is so horrifying that she has never told anyone her suspicions.
