Post by Jane Foster on Sept 24, 2015 6:48:15 GMT -7
“This isn't my first rodeo, Mr. Stark.”
Name:
[/ul]RP experience:
“Who are these people?”
Full Name:
[/ul]Nicknames:
[/ul]Aliases:
While Jane is not fond of Ian’s suggested “The Midgardess”, she much prefers it to Darcy’s “Space Dork.”
S.H.I.E.L.D has yet to send a response
[/ul]Age:[/ul]Class:
“We have left humanity behind...”
Any special talents?
Jane is a rather skilled engineer, which, in her opinion, really should shock more people than it does. It certainly surprises her most days; as with most things, her success is very hit and miss, but she triumphs the majority of the time and can do basic maintenance and repairs on almost any machine or device large enough for her to actually dig into.
Jane originally planned on becoming an engineer, after having developed a passion for “tinkering” over her many summers spent at science camps, but switched majors her second year at Culver University. Her equipment is hers more because she built it almost entirely on her own, and that should surprise people! She really wishes it surprised people!
Can build a giant wormhole machine to “punch a hole in space” with very little help, cannot figure out how her cellphone works even with the assistance of her intern, her intern’s intern, and a dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. agents… that was a fun afternoon.
Is incredibly clumsy. She has to know how to fix and rebuild her own equipment because she’s constantly knocking things over and breaking/destroying them. Would likely end up accidentally setting half of the Pacific Ocean on fire if left alone for too long. And that takes a lot of skill, if you really think about it. [[see also: somehow stumbling onto another planet and becoming the vessel for an ancient and incredibly deadly power source; somehow always managing to hit Thor with her car.]]
[/li][li style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;"]Knits cute little things when she’s feeling anxious and/or homesick.
[/li][li style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;"]Can devour an entire gallon and a half of strawberry ice cream in less than 20 minutes if angry enough… totally unrelated to the knitting thing.
[/li][/ul][/span]Honestly, none. She’s a normal human. But normal humans can be super too:
Others think Jane has a near super-human level of intelligence, but she vehemently --maybe violently-- disagrees. Her I.Q. is just barely above average and her brain is no more extraordinary than any other brain; Jane is painfully average, yet incredibly curious and determined and optimistic, with almost unending patience. Or she’s just too stubborn to quit, and that makes her extraordinary. Can bull-headedness be considered a superpower?
Her ability to learn and retain new information incredibly quickly could also be considered a superpower. She sure would prefer to think of it as a superpower.
Probably also the ice cream thing. That’s just unnatural.
- Is completely fearless.
- Dr. Jane Foster has this amazing ability to forget to worry about potentially disastrous consequences before marching straight up to dangerous people/gods/monsters and smacking them when they’ve done something in the wrong.[[see: fearless]]
- Car Karaoke Queen.
- Has the absolute worst penmanship in the history of the written word.
- Oh and yeah, is an expert scientist who is currently at the forefront of her field and could probably end up winning a nobel prize very soon for her contributions to the physics community. Has a scientific theory, and a few academic centers, named after her.
- Despite being an absolutely wretched public speaker, Jane can and will happily chatter about her work and experiences if even the slightest amount of interest has been shown.
While I do really like nurse/paramedic/museum curator/physician!Jane Foster, I honestly much prefer astrophysicist!Jane because eff yeah science ladies!! However, I absolutely adore the whole storyline of Earth-616!Jane becoming Thor and would love to see the MCU take her story a similar route. I’m always a fan of the “one character of a ship becoming terminally ill” trope and the angst that ensues. Sorry. So yeah, I kind of have my own headcanons on how that could happen and I think it’d be fun to explore.
This also seems like a great time to apologize for my own ridiculousness. Sorry, I’m silly and having waaayyyyy too much fun writing this. With so little MCU canon (and frankly not very much on her background in any other canon) there’s so much room for my imagination to just go wild and yes.
Also, my physics knowledge does not go any farther than what I learned in high school so I’mma do my best but, fair warning, if I’m having to write anything super science heavy it may take me a good while. I’ll probably end up spending days doing piles of research, just for this roleplay. That’s how I roll. It’s kind of a problem.
Personality:
The only child of an over-worked introverted mother and a frequently absent and inattentive father, young Jane wasn’t socialized very well. On first meeting she can come across as a little... brusque, and detached. Polite or professional small talk she can and will ignore. It’s dull and distracting and generally insincere, and just too emotionally stressful to deal with. Jane attaches very easily to others; she wants to care for them, she wants them to be important to her, but she’s been left in the rain far too many times. So she keeps a safe distance, attaching herself instead to her work.
At her core Jane is a caregiver. A smotherer. On more than one occasion she has forced Thor to take her sweater because she feared he, the God of Thunder, might catch a chill. She hovers, making sure Erik’s well rested and hydrated and feeling okay, forcing Darcy away from the computer and outside for some fresh air and an actual meal with maybe a few vegetables. Incredibly loyal to those close to her, once she accepts someone as an important part of her life, they’re hers. There’s no going back, they’re trapped forever and ever and she’s not letting go. They’re officially family. And Jane is fiercely protective of her family. To the point that she will throw herself in front of of her nearly indestructible Divine boyfriend to act as a pointless little meat-shield.
Aside from being a teeny tiny mama bear who suffers from frequent foot-in-mouth syndrome, Jane is incredibly stubborn in her dedication --to science, to her family, to breakfast foods and rainboots. She is passionate, aggravatingly curious, and so optimistic most days it’s physically painful. And, by the way, not over-fond of being seen as a “damsel in distress.” Her small size does not make her weak. She was once host to an Infinity Stone for the better part of a week.
Important note: interfere with her work and/or touch her things without her permission and Jane will hold an eternal grudge against you. It's been years and Jane has yet to forgive Coulson for his transgressions in Puente Antiguo.
[/ul]“Cause I'm with you to the end of the line.”
Family:
- Dr. Jack Foster: Father, Professor of Applied Physics at Culver University; deceased.
- Donna Berg-Foster: Mother, High School Chemistry teacher/Volleyball Coach; deceased.
- Dr. Erik Selvig: Surrogate parent and mentor, acted more like a father to her than her own father ever did.
- Darcy Lewis: Eternal intern and best friend.
- Ian Boothby: Poor sap who now has the misfortune of forever being a member of this crazy science family.
- Thor Odinson:
Giant Blonde Scandin-alien BoythingSignificant Other? - She’s also somehow managed to form a close bond with various Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, Asgardians, and Stark Industries personnel, as well as just about every scientist who has ever shared a lab or a cup of coffee with her. Many of them have become dear friends, and therefore family, whether they want to be or no. Her family has grown exponentially in the past few years, it’s hard to keep up with all the birthdays.
History:
“No, we're scientists... well, I am.”
Jane used to hate storms. As a very young child they terrified her. Violent storms are about all she can remember of Oklahoma. The walls of the house quivering from the thunder, rumbling in a dangerous growl like a giant, vicious dog passing by her window; warning her, daring her, before the crack of jaws and teeth gnashing against the glass. The safety of curling under a chair, of listening to her mother mutter over her school work (“three more pages…” “--this paper, then the exam, then the class--” “goddamn disulfides” “maybe it’ll be this term” “who's going to watch Janie?”) Her voice drowned out the roaring from outside and Jane would cling to the sound, wrapping around her mother’s leg and cringing at the crackling along her skin when the lightning struck again, far too closely to the house.
Her grandmother attempted to soothe her fears, with one absolutely ridiculous phrase:
“--that’s just the sound of God peeling potatoes!”
Weirdly enough, it worked. Tornados were still terrifying, but Jane could not listen to the thunder outside without wondering who the hell would think that sound had anything to do with potatoes?!
The next six years were spent in southern Arizona, her father working at the University of Tucson and as distant as ever, her mother teaching elementary school and still working into the early hours of the morning. It was far too hot for her to do much of anything, but in the summers she’d watch the storms. She could feel the pressure build and the temperature change and Jane would plaster herself to her window to count the seconds between lightning strike and the rumbling drowning out the argument in the next room. Afterwards it was just cool enough to finally go outside, and the skies after the monsoons were always the clearest. Sometimes her father would climb up on the roof with her and he’d jabber about how friction was keeping them from falling off.
When she was ten her father moved to Virginia, to be a professor. He never visited and rarely called and she and her mother moved to a smaller town north of Phoenix, one that would let her teach an actual science class.
There was a divorce a year later and a custody agreement that had Jane spending summers with her father. The first summer she’d spent the whole time in the lab, sitting on a chair, doodling the Perseids from memory. The next summer, a Dr. Selvig was working with her father and he let her sit in on some of his summer classes. After that her father sent her to summer camp after summer camp, every single year. But between camps she stayed with him at the university. She’d spend the day bothering him and Erik in the lab. He’d laugh sometimes and let her in on what they were working on.
Her father died halfway through her first year at college. But they’d had lunch a few times. He let her read a few of his papers. They sat outside once and he jabbered about the low coefficient of her favorite perch. He was a brilliant man. Jane had applied to Culver University just for the chance to work with him.
Jane buried herself in schoolwork, cramming as many credit hours as humanly possible into each term, taking full advantage of internet courses and summer semesters. A Bachelor’s degree in three years, Master’s in less that, and her Doctorate in another two; her original plan to avoid ever having to leave campus again backfired and she was done far sooner than she could have expected, and not ready in the least bit for adult life. She saw herself as more of a kid who just happened to have three degrees than as a legitimate, grown-up scientist. It’d taken Erik one embarrassingly long afternoon to explain to her that no scientists are ever actually “grown-ups” and, yes, they all cry into their ice cream and are mostly terrified of being forced into society when they’d much rather be at the lab or in the field.
And it’d still taken Jane another full week to accept those sad and terrifying facts and finally venture out into the world, but she did figure it out, eventually. Within a year of earning her PhD she had: flown back to Arizona to see her mother, went on vacation to London with her mother, lost her mother to cancer, fell into a mortifying whirlwind of a romance with the fresh-out-of-medical school Donald Blake (who, incidentally, had been the one caring for her mother), spent a lot of time sitting on rooftops, somehow convinced Culver to give her an actual job and fund this crazy theory she’d developed from sitting on too many rooftops, bought an RV and dragged a poor political science major out into her beloved desert to chase after rainbows wormholes atmospheric disturbances.
The first quarter of her second year post-doctorate was spent, as Erik phrased it, “storm chasing.” She once referred to it as her “looking for definitive proof of potato peels,” and even after years of effort she has yet to get Darcy and Erik to actually believe her that yes, the “God’s Potatoes” theory is an actual thing. That joke became a little less funny after an actual god fell out of the sky and in front of her car.
"I'm so sorry! I swear I’m not doing this on purpose”
So began The Thor Fiasco: the longest, weirdest, most stressful and emotionally draining three days of Jane’s entire life. Three goddamn days. In those three days her theory was proven correct, the government confiscated her life’s work and two days later returned (some of) it, they discovered that aliens really did exist, Puente Antiguo was almost destroyed by a 20 foot tall murder robot, and Jane might have let herself get just a little too close to a thousand year old prince god from another planet.
Jane fell for Thor hard. So damn hard, and so damn fast it was embarrassing and so incredibly stupid! Dr. Jane Foster, accomplished astrophysicist whose first and only love was science, spent one whole year chasing after whisps of clouds and working on a machine to force open a passageway to other planets --without even caring that it might potentially blow up her world in doing so!-- just so she could find her hunky space boyfriend. But he wasn’t actually her boyfriend! He was a man who kissed her hand and said believed in her crazy rambling and made a hollow promise to come back for her!
It was the Don situation all over again but, at least with Don he did eventually come back. Mostly just for his some of his things and to tell her he was leaving, but Don did come back! With Thor… he was just gone, and she couldn’t let it go. It took S.H.I.E.L.D.’s attempt to, well, shield her and Darcy to finally make Jane see just how ridiculous she’d been. After that bit of traumatic embarrassment she decided it would be best to just forget about Thor (and his big, dumb, beautiful face!) and move on. He was never coming back, at least not for her, and she had mountains of work to do. It was back to her lab in New Mexico, back to her research and her completely Thor-free life.
That plan lasted all of, oh, maybe five minutes? She should have known New Mexico was a bad idea. There was a three and a half month period of straight crying and trashy reality tv and angry rants into endless bowls of (occasionally spiked) ice cream. Her work faltered heavily after returning home from Tromsø, but Jane did manage to perfect the creation of various drunken milkshakes --her favorites being a banana split shake with copious amounts of rum and strawberry flavored vodka, affectionately referred to as “the babe”, and a concoction of kahlua, chocolate protein powder, and ice cream simply called “chocolate milk”-- so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. At one point she did consider writing a cookbook, but was informed by her lovely intern that her “work” really really didn’t involve actual cooking.
It was her concern for Erik that finally got Jane off of the couch and away from the ice cream. His phone calls were getting less and less coherent, and she had to do something. That something consisted more of flying to London and cleaning his apartment and buying groceries and ignoring her fear and her shame and waiting for Erik to let them know he was actually ok. Then the equipment started acting up and her curiosity got the better of her (and she found out that Darcy had apparently found a sudden interest in their work and had gotten her own intern?!) and she may have decided to touch a glowing, red liquid-esque thing floating between two boulders in a cavern that only a second before had been a dusty old hallway. And said defies-all-laws-of-physics-thing-that-she-probably-shouldn’t-have-touched --but definitely had to because science-- might have infected her and almost brought on the end of the world in what has become known as:
The Second Thor Fiasco --the second longest, weirdest, most stressful and emotionally draining three days of her life.
True, her life was being drained by an amorphous red mystery substance (that she’s still pretty bummed that she never was given the chance to study) and people died and the Earth was almost destroyed, but no one took her stuff. So, just barely not as horrific as the first time around. Also, she got to go to Asgard (and somehow managed to refrain from asking if they ate potatoes in The Realm Eternal), where she found it painfully difficult to stay angry with Thor, and to convince herself that she couldn't really care for him as much as she did.
He was just so… sincere. It was so strange, and she tried to ignore it but couldn’t, then tried to deny it and couldn’t. It was strange and agonizing and she saw that same pain in him which just hurt so much worse because he was just going to leave all over again! But he didn’t. He almost died, again, but once the dust had settled he came back. Thor gave up his throne and his home, to stay on Earth with her.
Since then life has been... interesting. They’re trying the relationship thing, but Thor’s always having to save one world or another and Jane’s so busy with her research and this whole public speaking thing and she’s had offers to teach and work in labs across the world and with various governments; they just don’t really have enough spare time. Sometimes it’s almost as if they are still galaxies apart, but she tries desperately to make time for him, and for Darcy and Erik and everyone dear to her who deserve far more than she’s recently been giving. She also tries to make as much time as she can for sitting on rooftops, and giggling at the silliness of thunderstorms, although now they have different reason to make her smile.
[/ul]“Dance-off, bro. Me and you.”
Custom Title
RP Sample.
May 3rd, 2012
Location:
Tromsø, Norway
Summary:
Jane basically sits around eating and such, in possibly the worst country imaginable for her to be in if you don't want her to think about Thor.
It was so damn dreary. Outside, thin clouds blocked just enough of the sunlight to make the sky look silver, which on just about any other day would have intrigued Jane. But with those clouds came an annoyingly consistent dusting of snow, and everywhere she seemed to go she could hear the faintest whisper of a rumble. They were storming somewhere else, just out of her reach. Darcy had bought her a tent disguised as a sweater. Sitting with her legs curled against her in the most uncomfortable dining chair in the Northern Hemisphere, Jane did indeed huddle inside of it like a mini fort, desperate for a bit of warmth.
It was May! Why did it have to be snowing here? She yearned for her lab in her desert with its deliciously dry heat. But that would mean another 20 hour flight and Jane was just too exhausted from the last one and jet lag was always just so… why?!
They’d landed just last night. Or, well, what was supposed to be night anyway. This time of year there was no such thing as night, just an extended dusk, a time of ‘not quite as bright as it was earlier today’. Jane felt incredibly out of place in a world devoid of darkness, of her beloved stars. The flat expanse of the land here was so beautifully perfect, the sky seemed impossibly closer and stepping off of the plane she knew that there should have been the most wonderful scene of Cygnus seemingly resting right against the horizon —had the sky been dark enough. Instead the constellation was barely visible, reduced to two faint dots Jane squinted at for ages. She kept that glower until well into the morning —or rather ‘a little brighter than it had been at midnight’-ing.
Why couldn’t they have asked her here during aurora season? Jane would have willingly paid them for the chance to be in Tromso in late winter to see the auroras! And the chance to witness weeks of an endless night… that’s when they should have called her here to consult, not now. Not when she’d been so damn close to blasting open that damn bridge. So close!
“Look, I’m sorry.”
The voice snapped her from her stewingmusing, but Jane was hesitant to respond. She stared down at the delicate little cream-filled cones on her plate for almost a full minute before slowly lifting her head to meet Darcy’s gaze. The younger was waiting with a cautious smile, eyebrows raised, glasses slipping down her nose. She considered the apology in further silence for a long moment, before shrugging and turning to the window.
“C’mon Jane!” Jane pulled her knees closer to her chest, balancing a bit precariously on the old wooden chair, before reaching out for one of the treats, effectively ignoring her intern. “Look, museums just totally seem like your kind of thing and it seemed better than waiting for you to blow up at those guys again. Didn’t really think they’d have, like, an actual exhibit about, uh—”
Darcy did not get to finish that sentence, the most pitiful of groans cutting her off as Jane sunk into her chair, frozen fingers covering her quickly flushing face. That damn museum trip! Reason number fifty-seven why this was possibly the third-worst decision of her life… She knew Darcy meant well, getting them both out of that holding cell of a laboratory, and that there was no possible way for her to have known how terribly it could have gone but the topic was one she’d be happy to never, ever discuss again. It made sense, though. They were in Norway for Chr—she sighed, slumping against the window. Saying ‘for Christ’s sake’ just felt so… weird now.
Norway. They were in Norway. A museum in a Scandinavian country with a very enthusiastic exhibit about their past should not be that surprising of a thing to come across. Even one displayed right in the very entrance, completely normal thing for a museum to do. A grown ass woman going into hysterics in the middle of a tour because they were approaching the ‘Thor Room’ is not something someone should find in a museum. In her defense, the hysterics were originally induced by actually being trapped in a sea of people in a very tight space. It was a panic attack, it just got out of hand. But there were people there who knew. They knew who she was, knew her connection, she was sure they knew! They all looked at her with such pity in their eyes because they knew and the shame was killing her. They had to know, there was no other explanation, and they wouldn’t let her go! ‘Oh, that’s that scientist girl Thor left behind’ ‘she so pitiful, poor little dear’ ‘worst crying face ever, no wonder he didn’t come back’
“Um... Jane? How many of those waffley-things have you eaten?”
“Thr—” she attempted around a mouthful of berries and whipped cream and perfection, “they’re called krumkakes and they're delicious, and really just about the only good thing about this job and—” Jane glanced at her friend then glowered, sitting a little straighter in her chair. That... was a good question. She looked down at her plate, first out of habit as she tried to calculate the number, then more in some vain hope that the answer may have been written in its faint gold design. Clearing her throat delicately she shrugged again, “—don’t worry about it.”
Silence again. It was incredibly uncomfortable. Jane finished another krumkake before Darcy spoke again: “The money to buy your waffley-things is nice.” Jane flicked a crumb at her assistant’s laughter. “Well it is, we’re making bank here—”
“We’re not doing anything,” she sighed. “You don’t think it’s a little strange that we were practically begged to come out here to consult, and now that we’re actually here no one will talk to us?” Jane’s fingers tapped a frantic little beat on the empty plate, waiting. Her companion just shrugged. “Darcy, they’ve just stuck us in a room and told us to just wait until they’re ready for us; no explanation. We’ve been here almost a full day and we’ve seen two people and they’ve barely said three words to us! This is the most void-of-people physics department I’ve ever been in. Who am I consulting, and what about exactly, and when am I supposed to consult them —they sure as hell seemed urgent to get me out here, so what am I waiting around here for now? What am I doing here, when I have work I should be doing elsewhere? I just… I don’t know what’s going!”
“Which is why I totally thought it’d be a good idea to get out and be touristy for a bit!”
A bell jingled right beside them then and Jane startled at the noise, her elbow knocking the plate from the table. It hit the stone floor with a painfully loud clack, but thankfully didn’t break. There was a bit murmuring now that Jane couldn’t quite remember having heard around them before, and she sunk back into her sweater-fort with another groan.
Darcy was beside her a second later, picking up her plate with a scoff and a grin trying so hard to hide the worry in her brow. “Nice one, Nanners. I’ll, uh, I’ll go get you a some more of those crumblycake-things.”
Jane watched as Darcy carefully stepped away, and then sighed, tucking her arms into her sweater. Her head lolled to the side. The cold window at her cheek helped her ground herself and bring her heart rate back down. Why did she have to be here? She just wanted to go back home, to her desert and her lab and her work. She was so close!
Thunder rumbled through the room, louder this time, reverberating through the window pane and coursing slowly through her limbs. Closing her eyes tight she willed for all of this cold and drizzly and snowy and cloudy and pointlessness to just go away already. And in that moment Jane was convinced this was possibly the worst Thursday she’d ever experienced.
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