OOC - A thought on birthdays.

OMG! Did Gwen just seriously turn 30 yesterday? I'm having a midlife crisis in her honour!

This has put me on a train of thought... what are my fellow mun's opinions on their pup's birthday? Did you get their birthday from canon, or have you invented one yourself? If one wasn't applied by canon, how do conclude how old your pup is, if you do at all? What bearing does their age have on how you play the character, if any?

I'll respond to my own question I suppose... To be honest I have no idea if August 16th is her real birthday, but I did find it in some outside source. I have no memory of her birthday being mentioned in canon, however I imagine it's been mentioned in some Torchwood-related canon. (I live in the US and don't have access to the official BBC website, so it is no help in answering my questions.)

As a 24 year-old playing a 30 year-old, I definitely tend to play her as a young 30. Gwen is not particularly mature for her age, and Torchwood has helped in a way to emotionally stunt her. She's not exactly immature, but up to joining Torchwood her life has been relatively sheltered and uneventful. If anything, she relates to other younger characters because she feels like she is on an emotional even-ground, even though her age and growing experience gives her license to feel she can also guide them.

OOC - Five Things About Gwen

This one has been going around, started by savagestime, I believe, and I decided to do one for Gwen. Mainly, I feel it will be a great help in communicating how I see Gwen, as I am a new player and still really learning who she is.

(This is also some nice procrastination, as I'm still slaving over that sex meme which I am going to post eventually, as soon as it sounds right! Even though the sex meme isn't cool anymore, lol.)

What are five ideas/concepts/etc you keep in mind while writing your character that you believe are essential to accurately depicting them?

In her heart of hearts, Gwen is a good person who loves others deeply.
As presented in the opening episodes, part of what brought Gwen to Torchwood is this fact, and I don’t feel canon has contradicted this. Gwen became a police officer because she cares about people deeply; she has a strong sense of justice that even applies to herself, and she has a strong sense of right and wrong. In the end, for her, it is about the people, and that thought is never far from her mind.

Gwen’s Torchwood story is a loss of innocence story.
When Gwen joined Torchwood, she was an innocent, bright-eyed child. She joined because she had seen the atrocities and injustices Torchwood fights against, and she wanted to be a part of that. She has learned that these horrors can’t always be fought, however, and that even if they are, the people she loves will not always survive it. The world is not the place she thought it was, and that’s her loss of innocence.

Emotionally, Gwen is stunted and immature.
I feel much of this is applied to the fact that her life has been sheltered until Torchwood. She’s been with the same man for almost ten years. Her parents are still together. She went to college, got a job, and pursued her dreams with little resistance. Torchwood, in essence, is her first experience with not getting her way. Because of these factors, Gwen is still very much a child at heart, who has been thrown into the frightening world of grown-ups. She’s being forced to mature.

There is a part of Gwen that wishes she never met Jack Harkness.
She would never really admit it, but if Gwen hadn’t met Jack Harkness and joined Torchwood, the idealism of her life would not have been disturbed. She is subconsciously bitter about this. On the other hand, her involvement in Torchwood stems from her innate thirst to find answers and seek justice; that, and she’s quite clever, so the retconn didn’t work quite as well as it should of. There is a part of her that might wish it, but there is not part of her that would consciously take it back. But, it is definitely Gwen’s “Turn Left” moment.

Gwen is not two-dimensional – by nature, she is contradictory.
Ironically, this is something I read about Gwen that makes her unlikable by many people. Oddly, this is what draws me to her, to all the Torchwood team, really. Gwen is loving, gentle, and giving. She is also vengeful, cruel, and selfish. She didn't cheat on Rhys in series one because she doesn’t love him; she cheated on him because she felt trapped and Owen gave her a way out. She didn’t turn against Jack in "End of Days" because she doesn’t love him or doesn’t respect him, but because she lost Rhys and was blinded by the horror of losing her single thread to a normal life. She is run strongly by her emotions, not because she is out to hurt people, but because she reacts to situations often by gut instincts. I would go as far to say Gwen definitely has PTSD due to her experiences in Torchwood, and that often prompts her outrageous reactions. There are things about her that are likable and equally unlikable, and I strive to understand those things and balance it in appreciation of her character.

for fandom_muses... Evidence (for the application)

Bloody Torchwood, Gwen thinks. Certainly no police, certainly no police process. Sometimes she feels that she’d give up the adventure just to regain the small amount of dignity she fears she lost when she took off her uniform.

That thought lingers in her head for fleeting seconds before she banishes it completely.

She can’t blame them, though. Chasing the creatures of nightmare and preventing world domination on the part of volatile alien races doesn’t leave much time for playing CSI. Tosh did what she could with the computers, and Owen seemed capable enough when he wasn’t nursing a hangover or God-know-what-else. Regardless of their apparent deficiency in understanding the judicial system, there wasn’t anyone out there who would argue with Torchwood’s burden of proof, or, rather, lack-thereof.

( That, and she’s not sure she wants to see Jack try to fingerprint a weevil. )

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Cut for Length
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Evidence
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 439