Profile
Running on rage and ibuprofen, Gemini Lazar is the creator and head (re: only) admin of the Fourth Kind Forums, an internet message board for victims of extraterrestrial encounters and mysterious mutations. They’re a weird, pugnacious little shut-in, struggling to cope with their own alien abduction story, not to mention the strange psychic powers they were inflicted with in the process. Try as he might to keep an aloof, orderly persona within the bounds of the World Wide Web, the forum is his everything right now, and it’s becoming harder and harder for Gemini to ignore that he...well, cares a great deal about the members there. Maybe they could even be the key to helping him escape his tumultuous home life…
Appearance
Gemini is, regretfully, not someone of very mighty stature or build. Bony and lowkey frail, he comes up to barely 5’2”, and has thin limbs and long fingers. He has a tendency to slouch, hunched over a keyboard or notepad, desperately trying not to draw attention to himself. His hair is black and a little greasy, kept short and messy for the most part. It’s when you get to his wide, stubble-speckled face that his most, interesting features stand out.
The aliens that abducted him gifted him with a set of their eyes, vivid violet irises blown way too wide, one pupil in the left eye, three in the right. The skin around his eyes is patchy with pale purple burn scars—further abduction aftermath for everyone to see. His new eyes are hyper-sensitive to light, necessitating a pair of special purple glasses to help filter out the worse of it. They even have his regular prescription, how nice. :) Fashion wise, Gemini prefers comfort over style almost exclusively, burrowing themself in well-worn hoodies and that patterned windbreaker they've had since they were like 14. It doesn’t pay to dress nice when you barely leave your house, after all.
Once they actually do leave their house, though, once they flee into the desert with their forum friends, their appearance alters even more as their biology becomes more... alien. He shrinks down to 5'0" (yikes!), and his blood turns a pale, watery cyan. These changes (and more) offer nothing but further stress for the poor guy, but he's helpless to stop it!
- His teeth are sharp, another alien "gift."
- His pupils narrow to slits when using his powers, or when he's angry.
- Has heavy self-harm scarring on both his forearms, and nasty, ragged scars on both his hands.
- Usually has his shoes untied.
- Dabbles in dying his hair once he's able to flee his dad's house. Sometimes has purple streaks along the side of his temples and/or in part of his bangs.
- Also sometimes paints their nails, usually black or dark purple.
- He eventually gets a spider bite piercing on his lower lip.
Occasionally bioluminates pale purple spots from his cheeks and shoulders.
Personality
- Sullen
- Irascible and high-strung
- Careful
- Creative
- Fatalistic
- Vehement
This little dude’s got some issues! Perpetually hovering between “exhausted hopelessness” and “ready-to-burst belligerent fury,” Gemini lives every day through a haze of migraines and poorly developed social skills, the nature of his powers necessitating a weary, isolated existence (in his eyes, anyway.) At his best, he’s a passionate, thoughtful artist willing to put a lot of care towards the things and people he believes in; at his worst, he’s an aggressive, arrogant ball of gloom and doom, quick to make his problems everyone else’s, and drag the whole room down with him into a pit of despair.
As a forum admin he tries to maintain an air of cool, organized professionalism, always out locking off-topic threads or banning someone for a few days over some harmless hijinks, but his short temper and tendency to take things way too seriously often leads to him having very visible outbursts on the boards. When they don’t like something, they’ll be certain to let everyone around them know, usually more than once. Perpetually embittered by his life circumstances, Gemini tends to lapse into snippy comments, pessimistic snark, and half-joking pleas to be put out of his misery, but will clam up and recoil when shown any actual concern in response, especially publicly. They dislike the thought of being perceived, of being fathomed, and in IRL spaces try to do everything they can to stay far under people’s radar.
It’s only in private, trusted company that they’ll allow a few of their walls to come down. He’s more relaxed in one-on-one conversation, more apt to make jokes and express emotions beyond “smug administrative superiority.” At his core, Gemini’s a pretty excitable person, and if given the chance will geek out more than a little about his (unfinished) creative projects or subjects he’s interested in. It can still take a while to get him to open up fully, but until then he’s not a bad listener, and he really does try to make people feel better if faced with someone else’s emotional distress (even if he’s not terribly good at it. Hey, can’t win ‘em all!)
Likes
- Ufology and conspiracies
- Nintendo games
- Pixel art and spriting
- Making OCs
- Hardcore, "serious" science-fiction
- Psychedelic and prog rock
- A robust, informed debate
Dislikes
- Actual, real horrible little aliens. FUCK those guys.
- High fantasy, the concept of "magic," and wizards.
- Interactions with high profile Republicans
- People who REFUSE to take things seriously
- Crowded spaces
- Light
- Astrology, ironically
Skills & Abilities
Gemini’s eyes and brain have been tampered with by extraterrestrial forces, leaving him with altered biology and frightening psychic abilities. Chiefly among them is his powerful telepathy, which allows him to read other’s minds… constantly. This power is perpetually active, bombarding him with other people’s thoughts the second they’re close to him, making crowds unbearably loud nightmares to navigate and one-on-one communication riddled with mental obstacles. It’s a cacophonous hell, and Gemini prefers solitude for the sake of keeping his brain quiet.
As his powers grow in the years following his abduction, Gemini finds that he cannot just read minds, but also view other’s memories, seeing their mental history as a sort of shimmering “web” he can pick though… and even alter. With enough time and practice, he can delete someone’s memories, or change them entirely, without even breaking a sweat.
As an added bonus from his alien “benefactors,” Gemini’s body can exceed human limitations in many regards. He’s found that his reflexes are much, much quicker than before, he can get by just fine on only a few hours of sleep, and he doesn’t need to eat as much or as often as someone “normal” (and when he does eat, he often craves bugs and live animals, which can consume with no negative consequence.) His internal clock has become noticeably more nocturnal post-abduction, too, and his night vision is greatly improved.
Over time, they've also discovered their internal biology is...a lot different, now. Their blood is a water pale blue, like a spider's, and a thick, webbing-like material courses through their veins. Its existence, though troubling, doesn't cause him any pain, and in fact, it allows him to reattach severed limbs, the webs restitching them back into place. Fun!
History
Born in a coastal Florida town, Gemini moved to Washington D.C. as a child, at the behest of his abusive father’s lofty political goals. He grew up a quiet, awkward kid, extraordinarily close with his Chinese immigrant mother and perpetually at the mercy of his difficult home life. While his dad was serving on the President’s cabinet, Gemini took to the world of computers and aliens, transfixed by thoughts of beings from beyond the stars and the capabilities of technology here on Earth. Despite everything, he carried a spark of bright-eyed inquisitiveness…up until his early teens, anyway, when his parents divorced, messily, and his mother was forced to move back to Shenzhen. The stress of that separation, of his mom leaving, caused Gemini to have a massive nervous breakdown, and his ambition nosedived straight into the dirt, staying there for years.
It started to buzz back to life in late high school, as he started getting into video game development and building himself a little forum for fellow creators. He headed off to college in upstate New York, and was! Almost well and truly excited again!!! Excited to be out of his family home and studying software engineering, excited to start anew. His renewed energy gave him the itch to continue dabbling in ufology, and this reached a head in his sophomore year, wherein he became certain that he’d pinpointed the location of a passing UFO, and, against his better judgment, trekked out into the wilderness to try and catch a glimpse.
He caught…well, more than a glimpse, that’s for sure! Gemini was abducted by aliens calling themselves the Woven, who experimented on him with only the “best” of intentions, replacing his eyes, giving him powers, adjusting his entire biology for some unspoken purpose. They called this a “gift,” made clear that one day they’d return for a gift in return, and dropped the poor dweeb back down on Earth, speeding away into the night. The hyper visibility of his alien features and the trauma of the event forced Gemini out of college, back to D.C., back to his house with his father and all the grim thoughts he could now hear every drop of thanks to his new telepathy. Gemini’s ambition once again ground to a halt, as did a sizable chunk of his will to live.
Going out became a tortuous ordeal, thanks to his sensitive eyes and involuntary mind reading, leaving Gemini to become essentially trapped, a spider in a jar, holed up in his room nearly full time. He turned to the Internet, turning his creator’s forum into a forum for people experiencing alien mutations like him, so desperate was he for some kind of solace in his situation. So far it’s paid off, a cluster of “””like minded””” individuals cropping up on the Fourth Kind Forums, the first solid bonds he’s been able to make with people in years. He wants to meet them, wants to get out of dodge and escape his dad more than anything, especially before the Woven come back demanding a return for their “favors.” He has a plan, kind of. Executing it is the hard part…
Trivia
- Gemini is an AU version of John.
- Post abduction, they developed tritanomaly (blue-yellow colorblindness) due to their now nonhuman eyes.
- His favorite color is teal, honestly. It used to be purple but post-abduction the color's been kind of sullied for him. :( He's trying to learn to love it again...
- Takes his last name and main internal handle from Bob Lazar; Gemini watched his alien conspiracy interviews as a child and it's part of what got him really invested in ufology in the first place.
- Genuinely thinks astrology is absolute bullshit, and only picked the zodiac naming convention for members of his forum because it's a convenient, orderly system with loose ties to the cosmos.
- Has a passive interest in circuit-bending, but has never actually completed any of his like 5 projects related to it.
- Is a moderately talented musician, and owns several keyboards, including a keytar (it's purple.) Can't sing for shit though.
- Has a pet tarantula named Betty.
- Was on his high school's chess team, and routinely got into fights with other members.
- Has a special interest in xenobiology and sci-fi worldbuilding, constantly cooking up fictional alien species and developing dense extended universe lore for his in-progress video game project. Has notebooks upon notebooks full of sketches and messy character notes and anatomy diagrams.
- Is fluent in English and Cantonese, and can speak Mandarin and some very, very spotty French.
- Kind of hero worships Masahiro Sakurai
