20 Facts: Julien LaFontaine

by Steph Diorio on March 13, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Blog

I don’t draw Jules enough. I always forget that he’s a pretty good-looking guy.

Jules

  1. Julien grew up with his businesspeople parents in luxury in La Defense, Paris. He’s used to the finer things in life and struggles when he has to rough it – not because he’s a snob, but because he genuinely doesn’t know what to do.
  2. He loves doing research and is heavily involved in his dissertation a lot of the time. It makes him seem aloof, but he’s really just buried in primary sources and his mind is swimming.
  3. When it comes to the supernatural, he’s a total skeptic.
  4. He loves dessert of all kinds and gets extremely excited when it’s mentioned. He’s immediately at peace once he’s eaten it.
  5. Julien works best if he’s listening to Depeche Mode.
  6. Julien drives a Ford Ka, a tiny Ford city car, even though his parents are extremely wealthy and own several luxury vehicles and supercars, including a Bugatti Veyron. This is because he’s afraid to drive anything powerful. His parents were grooming him to become a Formula 1 driver, but at the age of sixteen he was involved in a horrible racing accident involving several cars. Although he didn’t cause the accident and came out okay, seeing one of his fellow racers temporarily end up in a coma traumatized him, and he stopped racing.
  7. He’s needed glasses since he was about eight.
  8. He can be in quite the sour mood if he doesn’t get his daily dose of macaroons.
  9. He loves going to museums and takes a certain pride in the artists from his native France.
  10. Julien’s summer vacations as a boy frequently included trips to North Africa – he’s been to Morocco, Algiers and various locations in Egypt.
  11. Because he comes across as being very serious, Julien is Armo’s most frequent practical joking target. He has what could best be described as a ‘mildly tormented’ relationship with the Finn.
  12. He really loves old movies, especially silents.
  13. Nobody else at the historical society gets his sense of humor, which occasionally frustrates him.
  14. He gets flustered when he doesn’t know what to do in a real world situation. Money doesn’t teach you those things.
  15. He dresses in business casual at the historical society even though they don’t have to dress up to go to work. He’s proper, he thinks.
  16. Besides dessert, he also loves cheese, which allows him to bond with LaGuardia of all people.
  17. Julien finds the concept of fast food immensely disturbing. He once threw up after seeing the “food” they serve at 7-Eleven.
  18. He enjoys riding his bike. Not only does it lack a powerful engine, thus making him safe, but it also counts as exercise.
  19. Julien enjoys reading classic literature and is a big fan of Victor Hugo.
  20. When he travels, he actively seeks out pastry shops to get the best desserts wherever he goes.
  Comment

20 Facts: Fiorella “LaGuardia” Azzara

by Steph Diorio on March 12, 2013 at 10:00 am
Posted In: Blog

LaGuardia is kind of sort of insane. But that’s kind of sort of why we love the girl.

20 Facts LaGuardia

  1. She’s from Middle Village, Queens, and has been a Mets fan as far back as she can remember.
  2. Her prom date in high school turned out to be gay. They’re still friends, but she felt really awkward for a while.
  3. She attended Skip Barber Racing School between her junior and senior years in high school.
  4. Her cousin was a firefighter who died in 9/11 when he went back in to rescue more people. He taught her how to tune muscle cars, so her Camaro has a license plate frame dedicated to him.
  5. She loves cooking with Vito. She does quite a bit of Italian cuisine, but she occasionally enjoys branching out and trying new cuisines, as well.
  6. Her driving style is extremely aggressive due to being from Queens. She learned how to weave through traffic with ease, which she now applies to racing. She and Ells are the two best at this on the team.
  7. She’s the shortest member of the regular cast at 5’0″ even. She makes up for being small by also being loud.
  8. Comparing her to Mario Andretti is the highest compliment you can give her in her opinion.
  9. Although she loves driving, she takes the 7 train to get to Citi Field and almost never drives into Manhattan.
  10. She’s intensely proud of being Italian. Her surname is actually Sicilian in origin and she credits her temper to that.
  11. It surprises almost everyone, but she likes reading, especially Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder series.
  12. Her life dream is to meet Max Venturi, Lamborghini Driver. (And Mario Andretti.)
  13. Her nickname of ‘LaGuardia’ is multifaceted. Her given name, Fiorella, is the feminine form of Fiorella. Fiorella LaGuardia was a mayor of New York in the 1930s. LaGuardia Airpport, situated near where the Mets play, is named for him, so LaGuardia really has two reasons for her nickname.
  14. On the racing team, she specializes in driving open-wheeled and open-cockpit cars. Being small helps with the G-forces.
  15. She enjoys the occasional campari when she’s not driving.
  16. LaGuardia used to wear her hair longer, but she keeps it short now. Her reasoning is that a helmet won’t mess it up too much.
  17. LaGuardia is fluent in Italian and works as an interpreter. She met Vito at work.
  18. She has a love-hate relationship with a car the racing team acquired when they were just starting out, a 1979 Autobianchi A112 Abarth that she calls ‘Shitcar.’ She’s tuned it excessively, including giving it nitrous, and pushes it extremely hard, screaming at it as she drives it.
  19. She’s very close with her extended family, especially her cousins.
  20. She someday wants to reenact the Mille Miglia.
  Comment

20 Facts: Stacy Bowles

by Steph Diorio on March 10, 2013 at 10:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Stacy and Chris are the two ‘normal’ people at the historical society. Stacy’s the quieter of the two, but she’s still a voice of reason quite a bit.

Stacy

  1. Her parents divorced when she was young. Stacy was raised mostly by her mother in Brooklyn. Her mom runs a pottery studio and Stacy grew up in the apartment above it.
  2. She’s a heteroromantic asexual – she can fall in love and be in a strictly romantic relationship, but she has no sex drive. She had emotional issues and feelings of inadequacy over this during her teenage years (especially given that she knew plenty of her classmates were having and enjoying sex), but she’s doing better with it now and is more accepting of herself.
  3. Although she can make pottery, too, she prefers to paint and do pencil sketches. She also enjoys working with charcoal and pastels.
  4. She’s worn the same green sweatshirt and do-rag to paint in since high school. They’ve been in the laundry what feels like millions of times.
  5. Stacy has clinical depression, largely a result of dealing with feeling inadequate due to her asexuality. She sees a therapist to keep her level, but she deals with it daily and has to keep an eye on her emotional state.
  6. Although she doesn’t talk much, she’s more emotionally intuitive than most people and often notices when something’s wrong before the others. She’s a very comforting person to have around.
  7. She often uses painting as a form of emotional therapy. When she’s doing this, she always uses watercolors.
  8. She hates that people consider the filters on Instagram ‘artistic’ since it demeans the work of actual photographers.
  9. Stacy interned at the Met when she was learning how to restore art. She still sometimes helps out at the Met or MoMA if nobody else is available.
  10. Although she’s not very religious, she’s really interested in religious iconography in art and even wrote her undergraduate thesis on it.
  11. Her grey eyes come from her father, but she isn’t too fond of him so she doesn’t like it.
  12. She writes down her dreams, although instead of analyzing them she uses them as inspiration for her artwork.
  13. She loathes hipsters. She doesn’t get why subcultures and cultures at large have to define what ‘cool’ is because she thinks everyone’s idea of ‘cool’ is different. Ironically, all of her co-workers consider her to be the “cool one” in the group.
  14. Stacy is strangely good at figuring out people’s motivations and often sees right through people. She thinks it’s because she knows how to catch people selling fake art.
  15. When she was a kid, her mom used to cheer her up by making her chocolate milkshakes. She makes them for herself now if she has a rough day.
  16. She enjoys being cozy and often curls up near the fireplace in the historical society’s office in winter.
  17. Sometimes she’ll paint the same thing in the style of different artists for fun.
  18. Stacy has a secret dream to illustrate picture books for children someday.
  19. In the winter, she’s never without a knitted scarf her grandmother on her mom’s side made for her. She lost her grandmother to cancer several years ago.
  20. She’s paranoid about where her erasers are at any given moment because a friend’s dog ate one of them when she was in high school. Although the dog didn’t get sick, she felt guilty anyway and now fusses over her erasers as an adult. (Candide, Corey’s cat, likes to play with them on the desk.)
  Comment

20 Facts: Chris Sanders

by Steph Diorio on March 9, 2013 at 10:16 pm
Posted In: Blog

Let’s talk about the best shot in the cast for a bit, now, shall we?

20 facts art

  1. Chris learned marksmanship as a kid using BB guns before moving to real weapons when she was older. Her parents encouraged her in this pursuit as long as she was responsible. (She was.)
  2. She started playing the guitar at an early age, as well, but her parents were much more vocal about this talent than her shooting ability for obvious reasons. (They were proud of both.)
  3. Chris has two younger brothers and more than a few younger cousins. She’s a fantastic babysitter.
  4. She enjoys riding horses. She’d love to own one of her own someday.
  5. Chris met Harvey when his reenacting group did an event at the historical society. They hit it off, began dating and eventually fell in love.
  6. Sometimes Chris and Harvey go to a local shooting range on the weekends. It keeps them both sharp for competition target shooting, not that there are too many local competitions to enter in Northern New Jersey…
  7. Chris occasionally plays the guitar and sings at a local bar. Harvey does his best to never miss a gig.
  8. Chris takes on the role of older sister to Jessie, especially since Jessie can be somewhat naive and needs to be looked after.
  9. Her mom calls her Chrissy. She never tells anyone else to call her this – not because she doesn’t like it, but because it’s between her and her mom and is  therefore special.
  10. Chris’s middle brother, Brody, is in the US Army. He may or may not get to train as a sniper in the future, but he does have his sister’s gift for marksmanship.
  11. She’s really good at handling people, so she both handles the historical society’s front desk and takes care of PR. Really, it’s that no one else is normal enough to do it.
  12. Chris adores old weapons, particularly old guns. She’d collect them for herself if she had more money and space, but for now she just helps Corey correctly catalogue the ones the historical society owns, including a reproduction of a matchlock.
  13. She’s really good at using reproductions of the above old guns and has been known to do firing demonstrations at the historical society time and again.
  14. She drinks warm milk before bed every night. It’s once again a comforting memory of her childhood.
  15. Chris is Karen’s backup when Rugen has them play paintball. She snipes people who threaten Karen whilst she’s operating heavy machinery/weapons.
  16. Although she plays an acoustic at gigs, Chris can play the electric guitar, too.
  17. Chris loves iced tea, especially when it becomes an Arnold Palmer. Not that she golfs or anything.
  18. Chris also loves using her slow cooker, especially in winter (because then the entire house/office smells like stew).
  19. She dresses in a sort of Western fashion even though she’s from New Jersey. She says it just fits her personality well.
  20. Her favorite season is autumn – she loves the colors in the leaves and amazingly doesn’t mind raking them up.
  Comment

20 Facts: Jessie Parker

by Steph Diorio on February 6, 2013 at 1:01 pm
Posted In: Blog

She may be the cutest one there, but she’s no pushover!

Jessie

1. Favorite position to play? Jessie chose to play striker because her first crush (Ruud van Nistelrooy) did.

2. Name puns. She has an older sister named Sarah. Her parents thought they were being funny. Jessie and her sister disagree.

3. Glory, glory… She’s been a Manchester United fan since she was able to get the FOX Soccer Channel as a little girl.

4. Pets! She wants to get pets someday and name them after United greats (Charlton, Beckham, Giggs, Ronaldo, Rooney, etc.).

5. It’s for good luck! She’s worn her hair in pigtails ever since she had a high-scoring match in them in middle school. She’s superstitious.

6. I want candy! She loves Twizzlers and Skittles.

7. He’s cute, but that’s not all… Jessie likes Rico initially because she knows he’d be able to keep up with her and they’d be an amazing one-two striker punch at the front. She comes to eventually have stronger feelings once she gets to know him better.

8. I learned it on the internet! Despite not having much experience (read: none) in the area, she knows a lot about sex, which she attributes to reading romance novels and fanfiction.

9. I will go down with this ship. She ships her co-workers with people she thinks they should date.

10. That’s how it works…right? Sometimes she gives out romance advice without really understanding how things work in the real world. This yields very predictable results.

11. Team spirit. When the EPL season starts up, she paints her nails red and gold.

12. At least I’m not heartless. She admits she’s a total sap, but she says it’s better than thinking love is stupid.

13. It feels like forever… She’s been playing soccer since she was five.

14. Cheer up! She takes people out for ice cream when they get upset since her logic is that nobody can be completely sad after eating ice cream. (Ironically, Rico has a sweet tooth.)

15. Dream vacation. She wants to go to Old Trafford more than anywhere else in the world.

16. It even smells warm! In the winter, she bakes in the historical society’s kitchen so that the entire building smells like cookies. (She shares with everyone, of course!)

17. The drama, the drama! She watches daytime soaps as she does her college homework.

18. Big sisters. Since her older sister has her own life now, Jessie looks up to Chris and Karen as surrogate sisters.

19. I like trains. Jessie is a public transit master since she commutes to school and work. She can decipher any train or bus schedule almost instantly.

20. Keep your chin up. Although she’s not realistic about things, she tries to find a bright side in almost everything. She’s a fundamentally happy person at her very core.

  Comment

20 Facts: Bridget Gordon

by Steph Diorio on November 4, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Posted In: Blog

Bridget is a very patient woman. We know this because Bridget is dating Clarence. How she does it, we’ll never know, but she’s truly incredible.

1. Tastefully refined. Bridget wears very tasteful clothing. She does this just to offset Clarence.

2. Speed freak. She loves racing and goes karting in her spare time. This has turned her into a very good driver (and has made Clarence decide he has to beat her).

3. Don’t tell anybody, but… In her early years of secondary school, she designed a hovercraft. She’s really embarrassed about this because she knows now that the design would never actually work.

4. BOOM! She secretly enjoys explosions. She has a feeling it’s part of what attracted her to Clarence in spite of herself.

5. Being wet sucks. Bridget hates rain and ends up almost assaulting Clarence with hair dryers whenever he comes back in from running around in it.

6. Flying Scot. Her Renault Clio is named ‘Jackie’ after Sir Jackie Stewart.

7. Accessorize! When she was still a student, she wore a lot of different bows in her hair. She ditched them at university in an attempt to look more grown up, but she’s saving them to hand down to a potential daughter.

8. Well, they taste good… She always has muffins with her breakfast.

9. Dress as the opposite of what you are, they say. She really likes pastels and other muted colors. She has a bold personality, but she likes to wear things that are gentler than how she acts, talks and drives.

10. I’m right! Bridget is one of the few people who can go toe-to-toe with Clarence on anything. If she disagrees with him on anything, expect a fight.

11. And so they fell in love. She realized she liked Clarence when she went to university and noticed that she missed arguing with him over little things. (They tend to agree on the big things.)

12. They’re pretty, I’ve read! Bridget has grey eyes, much like Stacy. However, she likes them since Tolkien’s most legendary beauties have grey eyes.

13. I’m mulling it over… She has a habit of twirling her pen when she’s working. The harder she thinks, the faster she twirls.

14. Senna. She has a parakeet named Ayrton.

15. Starting off young… Bridget was bitten by the racing bug as a kid when nobody was able to beat her at Mario Kart 64.

16. Bumper cars. There is one instance in which Bridget is fine riding shotgun – when Clarence is driving a dodgem car.

17. Bilingual. Almost. She actually speaks fairly good French.

18. Stig mode? When she focuses on driving, she becomes completely silent.

19. You suuuuure? She gets her somewhat suspicious nature from her parents. Clarence is deathly afraid of them.

20. Nothing like the wind in your face! Bridget is also an avid rollerblader.

  Comment

20 Facts: Armo Karppinen

by Steph Diorio on October 18, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Posted In: Blog

Armo is not a normal person. In fact, I found out when talking with my friends last night and letting our characters interact that he once got bored and went on Omegle and convinced people that he was a male prostitute in Stockholm, Sweden. Armo is Finnish, not Swedish.

Anyway.

1. Because it’s there. Armo plays the drums, simply because he can.

2. Synchronized shifting. He hums and sings to himself as he drives because he feels that it keeps his movements synchronized, particularly his gear-shifting.

3. Mmm! He really loves Chinese takeout.

4. Stop fighting! Armo doesn’t like tension or conflict – it makes him really anxious. He tries to keep everybody cheered up as a result.

5. Perpetual student. Armo studied engineering at Tampere before coming to the U.S. to join Global Engineering-Motors and to study more.

6. Start ‘em early! He started folk racing when he was about twelve.

7. Goofy pls~ Armo has been known to make the occasional Uncle Dolan comic. He posts them anonymously on the internet.

8. Don’t be mean about it! Although he loves playing practical jokes, he draws the line at being mean or doing things that would actually bother people long-term.

9. You’re eating THAT? He loves salmiakki. It’s an acquired taste, though.

10. Eternal optimist. Armo tries to see the good in everyone. He usually succeeds, but some people are just jerks.

11. Me nousemme kostona Kullervon… His Ford Escort (above) is named Kullervo. The car took a lot of abuse before he had it restored, and now it’s going to avenge that poor treatment. Armo, who loves the Kalevala (and hates child abuse), refers to the car by name and addresses it as a ‘he,’ which further convinces people that he’s crazy.

12. Don’t worry, he’s not Simo Häyhä. He likes pretending to be a Winter War sniper whenever he’s on skis.

13. Talk to the world! Sort of. Although he understands some Swedish and Russian, the only foreign language he’s fluent in is English.

14. Fashionable headgear? He collects winter hats. He wears them even in the summer as an odd fashion statement.

15. Finnish baseball. He likes pesäpallo, which means he understands baseball and watches it with Ells and LaGuardia. He also watches hockey with Karen.

16. Here’s an Allen wrench! Sometimes he craves Swedish food and goes to IKEA. He likes the lingonberry juice.

17. Hold on, I’m thinking… When he gets stuck on a car design, he lays on the floor on his back and stares up at the ceiling to clear his head. Bonus points if there’s a ceiling fan to look at.

18. Soothing… Sometimes he runs the shower in his apartment until the bathroom steams up in order to simulate a sauna.

19. Where’s my Allegra? He gets bad allergies during the summer, another reason he likes colder weather. He deals with hay fever more often than he’d like to.

20. I’ll stay inside, thanks! He’s also prone to heat sickness and gets nauseous when it gets too warm or humid (or both). He likes air conditioning a lot. Sadly, this also means he can’t stay in a sauna as long as he’d like to without getting dizzy, so when he makes one for himself using his shower he can’t use it too long.

  Comment

20 Facts: Clarence Fulton

by Steph Diorio on October 4, 2012 at 2:20 pm
Posted In: Blog

We apologize in advance if anything Clarence wears ever makes you go blind.

Also, someone needs to tell him it’s not cool to pose when your car is parked horizontally on an incline and is tilting downwards on one side.

1. POWEEEEEERRRRR~! Clarence enjoys things with copious amounts of horsepower, especially if they’re used to demolish things. He loves the demolishing side of engineering.

2. Are you blind yet? He wears extremely obnoxious clothing on purpose for the sole purpose of offending people. He enjoys doing this more than he should.

3. I’ll just yell until it works, natch. Raising his voice is his solution to more problems than it should be. He has yet to realize that machines don’t work better if you shout at them.

4. It’s warm… As strange as it is, he likes being held by Bridget, especially if she hugs him from behind when they go to sleep.

5. Aaaah, right there… He’ll also melt under massages. Hitting the right spot makes him kick like a dog, but only Bridget knows where that is.

6. Domestic, erm, bliss. He fell in love with Bridget because she argued with him over petty things when they were in secondary school. One day he realized that arguing over silly things happens in marriages, and, well, there you go.

7. STOP! HAMMER TIME! He never goes anywhere without a hammer. He really, really loves hammers.

8. Hey, wait up! He loves driving fast, although he’s never quite been able to keep up with Bridget. He tries to, though.

9. Surprise! It’s edible! He enjoys curry – so much so that he can actually cook it, which usually surprises anyone he tells this to.

10. LOSERS! He enjoys gloating over things that he beats Rory and Clyde at. He used to gloat over Bridget, but he’s afraid to now.

11. Hi Ho Wolverhampton! Clarence was born in Wolverhampton and is a devotee of the Wolverhampton Wanderers (aka the Wolves).

12. In his blood? Because he spent his early years in Wolverhampton before moving to London, he fell in love with engineering as a young boy. Wolverhampton is known for engineering, especially of the aerospace sort.

13. It just makes me emotional, okay? The Ayrton Senna documentary makes him sob. He usually ends up curled up under a blanket on the couch crying whenever he watches it.

14. How’s the weather up there? He’s the only member of the cast taller than Karen at 6’5″.

15. Deluges are fun! He loves rain. He’s been known to go run around in it. However, he loathes driving in it.

16. They’re making me thirsty… He does his best engineering work when he’s eating pretzels. He has absolutely no explanation for this.

17. Sorry, that’s race day, I can’t. He has an obsession with Formula 1 and his schedule revolves around it. He’s cancelled social occasions before when they turned out to be on a race day.

18. You drive a WHAT? He has yet to let Clyde hear the end of it regarding Clyde’s MG.

19. Occasionally motivated. He’s really lazy, but if something bothers him he’ll see it through until the end. This can range from solving an engineering problem to dinner with Bridget’s parents.

20. Disguised affection. Very few people see his soft side. He buries it extremely well and has a habit of teasing people he cares about to let them know he cares.

  Comment

20 Facts: Rory March

by Steph Diorio on October 2, 2012 at 6:35 pm
Posted In: Blog

If Rory reminds you of someone on a certain TV show that I’m notoriously a fan of, he should. So should Clarence and Clyde, when you think about it. (I’ll post Clarence here soon. Still have to draw him with the Jaaaaag.)

1. Musically gifted. Rory plays the piano, keyboard and synth.

2. Driving on air. He’s wanted to build a flying car since he was five and saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the first time. He still keeps a copy of the book (which predates the film) with him to remind him of his lofty engineering goals.

3. School chums. Sort of. Rory met Clyde, Clarence and Bridget in secondary school. All four of them were in the school’s engineering club together and became close friends.

4. KEEP THEM PARALLEL! He has OCD and actually has to take medication for it.

5. Symphonic. He listens to classical music when he’s designing cars. He also listens to it when he drives his Herald. He does enjoy ’70s-’80s music, though.

6. DON’T TOUCH ME. There’s a spot on the back of Rory’s neck that is extremely sensitive. He freaks out and then collapses into a giggling heap if it’s touched. This has become a favorite game for both Clarence and Armo.

7. Classy~! Rory occasionally lounges around in smoking jackets after work. He sits in his armchair and reads, often holding a pipe in his mouth even though he doesn’t smoke just because it fits the setting.

8. The middle one’s always ignored… He’s the middle child in his family – he has an older sister and a younger sister.

9. Airplanes, whee! If you want to turn him into a total fanboy, show him old airplanes. The Supermarine Spitfire is his favorite.

10. Red or white? He knows a surprisingly large amount of information on wine. Rugen adores him for this.

11. Roger! As soon as he could, he got his pilot’s license. He figured he’d need it just in case he ever succeeded at building a flying car.

12. WHAT IS SLEEP Rory has the remarkable skill to completely throw off his sleep schedule. Every so often, the other engineers at GE-M will find him passed out on the sofa.

13. Where am I? He has no sense of direction. (Fortunately, his best friend is the homing pigeon.)

14. I like dogs and cats. He has a strangely cordial relationship with Corey’s cat Candide.

15. Erm…hi? He has no idea how to flirt with women, so he doesn’t even try to anymore. He had some humiliating experiences when he was younger.

16. “Just so I know where everything is…” Rory has an obsession with labeling things and making lists. These probably both stem from his OCD.

17. Why run when you can walk? If he can avoid running, he will.

18. Tact and precision. He’s fine being the passenger in a fast car, but very rarely drives quickly himself because he enjoys driving precisely and also gets lost a lot.

19. Not too hot, mind you. Much like Corey, he enjoys a cup of tea when he’s working, although he usually takes his lukewarm.

20. It’s called “flow.” He claims he wears his hair at “perfect convertible length” – just long enough that it blows in the wind as he drives.

  Comment

20 Facts: Miranda Rugen

by Steph Diorio on September 19, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Posted In: Blog

Don’t expect to see anything normal here. Rugen is extremely bizarre and meta.

Yes, she is reenacting a scene from Gangnam Style with her crappy Jetta.

1. Communist refugee. Rugen was born in communist Romania. Her father, a German-American businessman, was on vacation and he met and fell in love with her mother. Nine months later, he was a father, and he successfully helped his beloved and their new daughter leave the country and come to America. Rugen grew up in a bilingual household, which may be part of the reason she hired Clyde.

2. Polyglot. Rugen’s one of those annoying people who picks up languages with ease. She’s entirely fluent in only three – Romanian, English and Japanese (learning the latter in college and doing a semester abroad there) – but she has some conversational knowledge of Korean, Spanish, French, Russian and Swedish. She’s started to pick up some Finnish for Armo’s sake.

3. The Blankenshipmobile! Rugen drives a decrepit Jetta from the early 1980s. She has it because Kenny Blankenship, a character from MXC, her favorite TV show, drives one. This Jetta (pictured above and drawn horribly by me) is a frequent target of assassination attempts by Ells.

4. Occidental Otaku? Rugen listens to a lot of J-pop and K-pop in her spare time. She also reads manga and watches anime, a hobby she strangely shares with Corey.

5. “I don’t have a problem…” Rugen drinks recreationally, which her employees are nervous could evolve to full-on alcoholism if she’s not careful. Strangely, she’s always safe about it and is never around her car when she imbibes.

6. Dance party! She’s been known to learn the dances to her favorite J-pop and K-pop videos. Right now she’s been doing Gangnam Style in the office more than she should be.

7. Natural leader. She prefers to work with her employees instead of above them, which actually makes her a good boss.

8. DON’T! GET! ELIMINATED! If she agrees with something, she’ll quote MXC and reply with “Indeed, Ken.” She also yells “Lllllet’s go!” when she’s leading her employees somewhere.

9. Closet cosplay. She usually wears a red blazer to work, possibly as a tribute to Lupin III.

10. Shoot-’em-up! Her favorite team-building exercise involves having her employees play paintball against random people. Since the historians understand military tactics extremely well, they usually win.

11. Let’s do some remodeling… Before Rugen took over the historical society, it was fairly normal, but in danger of closing. Rugen stepped in and built it up into a historical task force capable of taking on important historical missions, including some issued by governments, and now it’s thriving.

12. Thirsty? Rugen worked as a bartender at one point in college and can make an absurd amount of different cocktails. She also keeps tonic water and gin around the office in case one of her employees comes down with a fever.

13. Walk the dog. She won her high school talent show three years in a row by doing yo-yo tricks and was barred from competing as a senior so that someone else could win. The school allowed her to host the talent show that year instead.

14. The Scottish play? Rugen’s favorite yo-yo, a Duncan, is named King Duncan of Scotland.

15. Dating is hard. She’d love to go out with Mark (Corey’s brother), but she doesn’t know how to get him to ask her nor does she know how to ask him. She also made this a goal when she was drunk one night, so.

16. Bright idea! She loves changing light bulbs. Not even she knows why.

17. See you later, space cowboy! Rugen wants a corgi because of Ein, the corgi from Cowboy Bebop.

18. Obfuscating stupidity. Rugen alternates between seeming brilliant and stupid. However, a lot of her apparent stupidity is often part of grand master plans. She’s strangely good at getting people to play into her hands, possibly because she convinces them she’s insane.

19. Bury it away. She doesn’t really deal with her emotions much, preferring to bury them under work and occasional alcohol. She doesn’t talk about them much and they build up on her sometimes, so she occasionally ends up crying herself to sleep.

20. Shoulder to cry on. She’s very emotionally supportive of her employees, however, and is always there to lend an ear.

  Comment