Gwendolyn "Gwen" Stanheight

She/Her

Born May 28th

15 Years old

Gwen is a young girl living in Sarasota, FL with her father. Every year on the day after school lets out for the summer, he takes her to the local theme park, Mystic Shores, in order to start the season off on the right foot. And after her first year of high school...Gwen is ready for a break.

However, this is the opposite of what she gets, as at the end of the day, just as the park is closing, she is drawn to a strange light she sees emanating from the fountain. When she gets close to investigate...she ends up falling through what ends up being a portal. (Along with her father, who tries to catch her, only to get pulled through too.)

She finds herself in a place called the Dream Realm, a sort of reflection of her world, where stories take on a life of their own. In the Dream Realm, Mystic Shores is a fully fleshed out world.

Gwen becomes separated from her father almost immediately, since the two of them land in a river. She's rescued from her predicament by Torrey, a young Park Resident who also happens to be looking for someone he lost.

The two travel together through the Dream Realm's Mystic Shores, having a whole plethora of strange adventures.

Gwen is known as a "Park Guest", the term residents have for people visiting from the "Upside Realm" (AKA what we know as the real world). In the Dream Realm, a Guest's imagination can manifest into actual power. This is concentrated into a gemstone known as a Quest Key, which manifests on Gwen's person when she first arrives. It usually is in the form of a bracelet, but it can take on the form of a wand. This is extremely powerful raw energy, but because it's tied to the heart and mind of an anxious teenager in a weird and scary situation, it is finnicky, and especially at first she can hardly control it.

She eventually practices with it and becomes skilled enough to do things like: fire off pink energy beams, create platforms to be walked on, and alter the appearance of something or someone. (She usually uses this to change she and Torrey's outfits...like when they went to a snowy area she made winter clothes for the two of them. She's also used it to temporarily become a mermaid before.)

Gwen has a very distinct style of dressing, she has a lot of bright colors and retro patterns. She usually opts for clothes that are comfortable, but still "cute". Gwen loves theme parks and knows all about various park lore and trivia. (She DEFINITELY watches Defunctland.) Her favorite, of course, is her home park Mystic Shores.

She takes after her father in a lot of ways, and being good with computers is one of them. She does a lot of 3D modeling, and wants to be some sort of computer artist when she grows up.

Gwen is overall cheerful and vibrant, but she gets nervous extremely easily and sometimes overthinks things. She doesn't consider herself to be very good at talking to other kids her age and only has a few friends at school due to her shyness, and some of her crueler classmates being unkind to her.

Gwen is a person who wants to be fearless, especially since she feels like she used to be, when she was a kid. This desire only grows in the Dream Realm, when having doubts causes tangible problems with her newfound powers.

The few people she connects with she really values, and part of why Gwen loves theme parks so much is that she treasures happy memories.

Some additional facts:

-She's a bit of a sweet tooth...her favorite treats are cinnamon churros, vanilla ice cream, and konpeito/sugar stars.

-I feel like...she listens to a lot of future funk.

-She's not a theme park ride, but I did base her whole motif off of the Falling Star flat ride! (Also called the Ali Baba in some places)

-The name Gwendolyn means "white ring" (sort of meant to invoke a vertical loop on a roller coaster and/or the circular motion that Falling Stars move in.)