Warnings: lore contains various child abuse, general family abuse and suicide. Mildly suggestive due to a certain genetial piercing being mentioned, possibly offensive words like "pansy" are in this
If you find any of these warnings triggering or inappropriate to you, do not engage.
My detailed character sheet for Guy! / Feste's is here
Name: Guy Darrin Gardner
Other names: Big Guy, Pitbull, green lantern, Captain Gardner, the Baltimore Brawler
Age: 39
How old they physically look: mid 30's
Sexuality: Bisexual (has some internalized homophobia)
Nationality: Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Ethnicity: White, American-irish (1/4 Irish)
Gender: Male, he/him
Sex: cis male
Appearance:
Body type: strong man/wrestler body type, big firm but pudgy stomach, muscular thighs and arms
Height: 6 ft
Weight: 240 lbs
Shape of face: square but rounded face
Eye colour: green
Eye shape: Deep-Set, slightly down turned and semi hooded eyes,
Skin colour: tanned, warm, peachy
Skin texture: for most of his body it's not overly soft but not noticably rough either, hands and knuckles are calloused, along his body will be a few scars which have a dry texture.
Hair: a straight bowlcut, ginger hair, underside is shaven with shaven side burns
Piercings: small black gauges on his ears, has a short Jacob's ladder (got it as an act of rebellion because his dad said piercings were delinquent and earrings are for pansy's)
Tattoos: none (but he's wanted one for years, just can't decide what to get)
Scars: various small ones along his arms, medium sized back scars from childhood abuse, has stretch marks scars along his thighs, stomach and pecs, brain surgery scar (looks like a long hook ) on left side of his head just behind his ear - visible on the shaved parts of his head - his bowlcut hides most of it
Hair texture: naturally wavy but styles and brushes it to be completely straight
Features: freckles on his cheeks and along his body, his nose is bumpy and thick - the bridge crooked due to being broken too many times, has cauliflower ears - left ear has a small chunk missing, has plump lips
Clothing style: compression shirts or general fitted t-shirts, casually - baggy trousers either by jeans or shorts, generally - tight trousers, wears chunky boots with small platforms or heels, casually - sneakers with shoelaces often undone or messily tied, loves wearing a jacket, regardless of the setting. If it's a leather jacket or a blazer.
Costume:
• wears black stirrup leggings with a white stripe going down from the hips to the ankle (meaning the leggings down to the foot and expose the heel and toes) that is tucked into a Green, leather-like crop jacket that sits just at the hips and has no sleeves with white trim and a high flared biker collar with matching white trims - the jacket zips up as an asymmetrical jacket. (Left sided)
• on his jacket, at the opposite side of his zipper (right side) he has a badge of the green lantern symbol with a white band with a black background and a chunky green lantern logo in the middle
• a weight lighting like belt around his waist that his jacket tucks into which is white with circular metal studs along it and green buckles going vertical on the belt and are spaced out wide.
• underneath his jacket is a long gloves sleeved ,double folded turtle neck shirt that's fitted to his frame (no wool fabric) and at the neck is a thick green chocker with metallic loops that sits over the turtle neck collar.
• wears LARGE chunky green knee high boots that have black soles and flare out with a pull strap at the edge like a cowboy boot, additionally he wears elbow high wide white gloves with green belts at the cuffs that have pale green palms
• wears a thick green ring on his middle finger that has the green lantern logo engraved on the 'head' of the chunky ring
Traits:
Posture: standing straight, chest puffed out and making himself look as broad and confident as possible
Teeth: crowded teeth, not overly bad but noticable, has a tooth gap between his two front teeth, his top right lateral incisor is chipped, top left canine is replaced with a gold tooth
Smile: crooked, often a smirk, big and smug, teeth-y smile
How they cry: gets ashamed, finds it extremely difficult to cry anyway so when he does, he is already shoving the tears off his face, teeth gritted. If he's able to leave the situation before tears fall, he will. will smack his head and berate himself if he can't force himself to stop weeping.
When they lie: Guy lies constantly with his bravado but in general, everyone just assumes he's full of shit anyway and he uses that to his advantage. The biggest tells that he's lying is that he'll be overly dismissive.
Express joy: loud and in your face, picking people up and roaring like he just won a prize. Biggest grin you've ever seen. His face is BEAMING
Type of anger: explosive. Whilst he's done therapy (which he hated and it took a long time to make progress due to it) to help with his anger issues - it can be hard to control and thus, often times he tends to sweat out his anger through exercise or punching things. He yells and will throw something - will tug on his own hair to try to keep in any aggressive impulses.
Nervous: his ears go bright red and he'll get dismissive, avoid eye contact and sweat a little depending on the severity of his nerves.
Speech: gravely voice with some nasally tones - very nasally laugh. Deeper voice, rough. Thick Baltimore accent. Example: "Aright, ya'll lil' shits, I'm da Cap'n 'round here, so dat means y'all do whateva' I say. An' I don't wanna hear none o' dat whinin' "
Voice claim/inspiration: https://youtu.be/cvyhYFLvGXQ?feature=shared (almost perfect but just needs the accent and abit deeper)
Eye contact: makes above average amount, does it to intimidate people most times. Was raised that avoid eye contact is disrespectful so he subconsciously has a habit of overcompensating
physical contact: overly touchy with most people, practically glued to anyone he holds dear
Social type: extrovert
Job: hero, Green lantern, part time mechanic/plumber/general handyman for neighbors mostly
Hobbies: reading comics or general books - likes action stories, working on his motorcycle, collecting classic comics he loved as a kid, playing pool, working out and watching TV.
Dreams: being the best green lantern and hero there ever was, proving to himself and others he's not a screw up and everything and more he could ever hope to be. He wants to the pride of not just his city but of the galaxy.
Fears: he's rotten to his core and will never be anything but a brute. He'll end up becoming an abuser and washed up. To amount to nothing. Being everything his father said he'd be and worse.
Strengths: Hand-to-Hand Combat, wrestling, Boxing, Indomitable Will, protective, heroic, strong sense of comradery, strategy, making people hate him so they don't focus on his peers, cooking, good at fixing cars, sinks and other things like it.
Struggles: colour blind, struggles with some motor skills in his body, hard headed, hot tempered, impulsive, superioty-inferiority complex.
Type of humour: crude, blunt, sexual, banter
Heat preference: likes to stay cool as he naturally runs hot
Favourite food(s): Fruity Pebbles cereal, fries, protein shakes, anything high in calories
Least favourite food: poached eggs
Pet preference: dogs
Morning or night person: night, when he can he practically sleeps half the day away
Class: lower working class
Favourite season: summer (surprisingly)
Music taste: metal, rap, hip-hop, rock, Classic R&B
Alcohol tolerance: heavyweight but prefers not to drink
Pain tolerance: high like.. insanely high, he gets beaten up so often he laughs even if he's bleeding and has a black eye
Traits: due to his TBI in his 20's he became a messy eater due to mobility difficulties, has a lot of post-stick notes around his apartment and has difficulties reading word only books - enhanced his love for comics, needs reading glasses but is too embarrassed to get them, has Cerebral Dyschromatopsia type of colour blindness, he has a warped depth perception - he's been able to manage it and it's not too severe, makes his preference for close combat more apparent.
Bad habits: whilst he prefers not to drink sometimes when he's stressed or feeling worthless he turns to drinking, but he'll never get drunk enough he can't control himself - he regrets it regardless, easily angered and can blow up a lot, uses alot of tough love as he isn't always sure how to handle other people's emotions
Love language(giving): physical touch, banter, acts of service, play fighting, intimacy
Love language(receiving): physical touch, banter, words of affirmation, praise, intimacy
Guilty pleasures: 'white girl' club music, likes using colouring books to calm him down, likes being taken cared of/being babied when he's feeling low
Relationships:
Family: estranged relationship with his mother- was a mama's boy until resentment for her passivity built up, no contact with his dad - his dad was abusive so he HATES him and his brothers dead - had a complicated relationship with him until his suicide.
Friends:
• Kyle - has a soft spot for him - he won't admit it but he sees Kyle as a little brother,
• John - appreciates that he supports him even if they can butt heads and feels like John keeps him grounded when they team up
• Hal - EXTREMELY complicated relationship - they feed each other's bad habits and traits but also understand each other more than most.
Other relationships: Feste - his opposite yet they have more similarities than they'd like to admit, envies his collected composure, realized early he was the only one who snaps it, they really didn't like each other at first but slowly and silently their relationship kept changing and growing more softer, more patient and even hate when they can't work together. When they get together as a couple they become VERY obnoxious about it, everyone hates to see them coming
Lore:
Guy Gardner was from Baltimore, where he was raised by his parents, Roland 'Rolly' and Peggy Gardner. Rolly was an abusive alcoholic who beat Gardner repeatedly, he was a police officer who was know for being a dirty cop in his neighborhood. Gardner worked very hard in school to try to win his father's approval, yet all his achievements were dismissed - Guy was surprisingly academic, it wasn't always perfect but he did well in majority of his classes but was being put into special classes because of his behavioral issues. Guy even tried to stop his dad from drinking by throwing out his alcohol but it only made him get beat. On a different occasion after a harsh beating, Guy snuck some of his dad's beer into his room and drank it - his brother found out and told on him, Roland made Guy drink untill he puked.
Instead, Roland lavished attention and compliments upon Gardner's older brother Mace, who, it seemed to Gardner, could do no wrong in their father's eyes. Gardner's only escape at this time was General Glory comic books, even modeling his bowl haircut on Glory's sidekick, Ernie.
Mace was also abused but it was more emotional than physical, he was put under alot of pressure. Threatened that he'd be treated like Guy if he didn't act "correctly" - Mace was completely brainwashed by his father's teachings and would even beat up Guy during their games together, smacking him if Guy made a mistake. Mace felt justified as that's how his father acted and to him, his father was always right and loved him. He blamed Guy for getting abused as he should "just act right"
Peggy was utterly passive throughout it all, often getting into arguments with her husband but in private she'd verbally degrade her husband - she knows what he's doing as wrong but seems it more like she cares about humiliation their dysfunctional family brings socially.
During his mid-teens, Gardner finally decided that nothing he ever did was going to be good enough to win his father's affection, he considered to have a good relationship with his mother despite her passivity as she was the only family member who didn't abuse him but she also pushed the same toxic masculinity his father tried to hit into him, and the young boy became a juvenile delinquent. Getting in trouble with the police with other neighborhood boys.
Gardner was 'straightened out' from his downward spiral by his older brother, who had become a police officer and arrested him on one of his runs after beating up a guy who tried shooting (thankfully missing) some kids that accidentally trespassing on his property. Mace told him he was becoming everything he expected he would and it set Guy off. It sparked his fire to prove his brother wrong. If he couldn't prove it to his father, he'd prove it to him.
The only adult who gave him support was his football coach who fought tooth and nail to keep him on the team and in school despite his antics as he always did high school to the best of his abilities and was a star on his football team.
Gardner then went to college (18 years old), with a rocky record - academically he scored high and had multiple notes of doing community work and even got a scholarship with football, working his way through to support himself, and emerging from Michigan University with bachelor's degrees in education and psychology alongside his sports qualifications but no one saw a career possibility with his record.
But his winning streak came stumbling when the news of his brothers death came. Every weekend he'd go over to his brother after Mace got paralyzed in a shoot out. And with Maces death, his Father became a total deadbeat and when Guy refused to come back home and become the man of the house, his mother disowned him.
A year after college, he stayed in Michigan, Gardner worked as a teachers assistant for children with disabilities. (23 years old) Specifically teaching PE - in title he was a TA but in role he was as much as a teacher as any and had agreements with the school to help do what they can to work around the technicalities to make sure he's getting paid extra. He loved this job, Guy wasn't the best but he was really turning his life for the better in massive steps.
When the alien Green Lantern Abin Sur crashlanded on Earth after being mortally wounded by the villain Legion, he commanded his power ring to find a man honest and fearless enough to pass his power on to. The ring found two suitable candidates: Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan. Because Jordan was closer at the time, he was chosen over Gardner as the one to receive the ring.
Ever since Guy has felt something itching at the back of his mind. Green painted his dreams and heard his voice when no one was there. Something called to him but what?
As Hal was needed more and more into galactic missions, it was time he let a new ring seek a new hero of earth to keep it protected from threats that escaped the stars. The ring met another cross roads - to seek out Guy (26 years old) or a new worthy weilder. Both John and Guy began experiencing this itch - a subconscious beckoning but who would arrive first?
Well, Guy would never find out what that call was as he ended up getting in a motorcycle accident. Put in a coma for 3 months with no friends. No family but he has community. All the parents he worked with did their best to gift presents and offer support. Guy got out of the hospital after 6 months in physical therapy and found out there was a new Green lantern. And that itch- it came back worse. Guy wasn't the man he use to be, so much of his emotional progress with his trauma relapsed. He was spiraling and his damn head wouldn't stop screaming.
And it finally happened. Almost 2 years of sinking further down into a haze, a ring floated down. Calling to him. Saying he was fit to wield the green lantern ring but at the cost of discovering how close he was to becoming Green lantern not once...but twice. And it made his fire spark once again to prove why he was meant to be the first GL.
In current day Guy (39 years old) is an honor guard and captain of the corp - he trains a lot of newbies or any younger corp members. He isn't seen highly by most members of the green lantern Corp but everyone understands, he is incredibly strong physically and with his ring but he is always best to have on your side than someone else's. No wants to have him on his team but no would be stupid enough to not let him be on them - he's loyal and powerful. In his civilian life he lives in Metropolis.
Hey I know you’re more Impulse/Young Justice focused comics, but do you have a reading list or maybe any recommended blogs for Guy Gardener?
Hi there and sorry for the delay in getting to this.
As for a reading list, here is one that should be helpful!
💬 0 🔁 82 ❤️ 216 · As simple and concise as I could make it. May be subject to revision and updates!
Green Lantern Vol.2 #59
First appear
As for blogs here are the ones that immediately come to mind (that are GL orientated or Guy-centric)
@bookkeeper-of-oa
@goodman-grace
@wajjs
@transguygardner
I know there are more out there but these are just the ones I immediately thought of. If you're a Guy-friendly GL blog, sound off below so anon can find people.
Me and @hollowsart chatting about GuyFeste and it made me think about some old things I've written
Guy thinks he's Ken for the meme of "Barbie has a great day everyday but Ken only has a great day if barbie looks at him"
But no, it's the reverse. Feste is soooooo abnormal and obsessed with Guy in a way he is desperately trying to hide even when they date and is literally ready to exist whenever Guy acknowledges him.
Guy: Feste ALWAYS has hearts in his hair The other lanterns not knowing how to break it to him that it only occurs when he's around:
Guy: Feste is in a great mood almost everytime I see him, hes full of life and always has a great handle on himself. Meanwhile Feste is adjusting his uniform for the 10th time coz he's been practicing a subtle new walk in hopes it will make Guy like him more:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feste's often cold and Guy's a human radiator. Guy eats what Feste won't. And both of them are love sick weirdos who act like being parted from each other for too long is a death sentence
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Someone: someone as nice as Feste probably follows like, a really cute kind of love. Like puppy love
Feste: ever loved someone so much you feel physically sick? Makes you so mad you want to take a chunk of their flesh?
The Sky Corps Academy: the best of the best, brightest of the brightest, tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties. Once a year, they receive mechs who land and choose their pilots, who stand ready to defend should the dreaded Sharg ever return.
Stanford Yu is... not one of these cadets, much as he'd like to be. As Olivia Park, the highest ranking cadet can tell you, he's "just the help". But a stray mech finds Yu anyway, and the two bond, and as there's no way to break the bond (and Skip Tanaka, the hero of the Sky Corps, is backing him up) Yu will have to join the academy and prove himself a proper pilot.
I am not a fan of mech stuff, not usually; it's just not something I got into, and I usually prefer straightforward superpowers, at normal sizes. But at its best, the genre can be just as important as any other, and heightening war material into giant mechs makes anything it has to say about war stand out more. But then again, giant robots are sometimes just cool, and that's what we've got in this series.
One thing that stands out about this series is that the mechs are also characters. You can't understand them, but they have roughly the temperament and morality of the Iron Giant (with a design that threads the needle between cute and badass, a personal favorite), and they bond with their riders and protect them. This is true for both the original mechs and the artificial one that the military made, implying you couldn't make these machines without giving them empathy. But more than that, it makes the violence they have to go through stand out more, since we grow fonder of these big metal people as the series goes on.
But thankfully the humans also get a good angle. I do like that nobody is outright evil, but they do some shady things for "the greater good" and everybody has a limit they can hit; it's telling that the shadiest character in the series is left without allies once their scheme is revealed. There's also an element of class warfare going on, with mechs being used in both engineering and warfare, but the former being elevated and having bigger egos. The fact Yu was a janitor and is a good mechanic never quite goes away, and it becomes important to the way people think about and act on things that happen to their mechs.
Speaking of: Yu and Park are the two main pilots, and they slot pretty neatly into shounen protagonist and shounen rival, respectively. Yu has the mentality of a mechanic, though, which plays out obviously and subtextually throughout the story, and his relationship with his mother proves to be a wonderful through-line. And Park is, once again, a fascinating individual with daddy issues, and we're never quite sure whether her desire to be loved will be tilted in favor of her jerkass father or her new friends. I do wish we had got a little bit more into the other two pilots on the team, Sanchez and Olivetti, as they mostly get character moments specific to them only towards the end of the comic.
The action is also good to great. It can devolve into giant robots punching things, but there's some strategy to it, and we don't just get into fights in the mechs. The pilots will freely step out if they need to for an advantage, and they're not so helpless out of the mechs that they can't throw hands.
The story is fast-paced and dynamic, twists and turns revealing themselves along the way that make fighting the Sharg more of a headache than it otherwise would be. I had fun with this one, and I'm curious about its sequel, Mech Cadets, which I should review shortly. There's also the Netflix adaptation of the same name but I've got other stuff I'd rather watch, so feel free to check it out.
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