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P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Ca
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nothingtofear
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: n
Email + IM: cltonabun@gmail.com ; n0tJesus @ aim
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Spike (allbloodyhail)
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Ned
Canon: Pushing Daisies
Original or Alternate Universe: AU
Canon Point: 2x11 “Window Dressed to Kill” + 7 months of game history / then dropped & updated → 2x12 “Water and Power” + 9 more months.
Number: 009
Setting: Ned lives in a fictional place called Papen County. His home town is just on the outskirts of this and is called Coeur d'Coeurs. There's no specific location ever sighted for this imaginary place, but I've taken it to be New England with the nearby lighthouses, lobster fisherman, beach community and so forth cited in specific episodes. Massachusetts or Maine are possible though there are decidedly different things about this world from our own. This world is saturated with color, almost uncomfortably bright. Everyone wears colorful clothing and everything is colorful. Ned is the only one in-series to wear dark colors exclusively, but he is also the only one presumably with an ability. Also, for all that this seems like a sleepy New England town, there sure are a lot of murders.
The technology seems no more than the 1940s down to the cars driven and the phones featured in houses. But then things like color cable TV, internet, and cell phones are referenced vaguely. This is an alternate universe okay. Here is the wiki.
History: Ned discovered from a young age that he was not like other children. He could bring the dead back to life. He tinkered with this power; sometimes by accident, never realizing a life was taken for each of the lives he gave back. But when his best friend, Digby the golden retriever, is hit by a truck he doesn't hesitate to bring him back. Unbeknownst to Ned, a squirrel takes Digby's place and as long as he never touches Digby again he may live forever. For nineteen years later, Digby doesn't look a day over the three years, two weeks, six days, five hours and nine minutes old he was the day he was brought back to life.
When his mother dies suddenly of a brain aneurysm, Ned touches her--incidentally, murdering his childhood friend Charlotte Charles' father, Charles Charles. Though he now understood the consequences of his strange ability, he rationalized the action with himself until seven hours later his mother kissed him goodnight and she went goodnight, forever. Charlotte, or as young Ned called her Chuck, shared their first and only kiss at their parent's adjoining funerals.
After his mother's second death, Chuck's father flew, and left him to spend the rest of his childhood at the Longborough School for boys. Ned didn't make very many friends, and with the separation of his best friend, the dog he couldn't touch, he often felt very lonely. One night when he was feeling especially homesick, Ned set about to create a little comfort in the form of a fresh-baked pie. The smell brought his roommate to the kitchen and they shared in a little comfort together. Ned's pie-shaped comfort came with a price, as the entire class wakes and he makes a pie for each and every one of them. He gets in a mess of trouble but it's this early on that his idea for the pie shop is born.
Digby finds Ned, against all odds, and Ned hides him in his trunk at the foot of his bed when people are around. This eases his loneliness and the pain of being the only boy who never receives any mail, but that all changes one year on Halloween. After hearing nothing from his father since he'd been shipped away, he receives a postcard. The postcard tells Ned his father's new address, and in search of answers he goes there to trick-or-treat. Digby and he go to find Ned's derelict dad, dressed in child cowboy sheets. It's then Ned discovers his father did not only run away, but ran towards and into the loving arms of a new family, and two new twin boys.
He returns to school to carry out his sentence, with a honey candy bar and a heavy heart. Ned goes on to undead a few more things, his roommate's rabbit and python, and Ned makes his first friend. Under the false pretenses of solving a murder in the woods, Ned undeads a gunshot victim and asks him who murdered him. While he discovers that the dead man was not killed by any mysterious killer, but an accidental discharge, he redeads the man just in time for the police to catch him in the act. Ned and his roommate are locked up, though his friend is rescued by his parents Ned rots a little longer, further cementing his utter abandonment.
Though the middle bit of Ned's life isn't covered, we do glean that after his unremarkable high school career he went on to have some sort of former training in culinary science. He never forgot the pies he snuck away from gym class to bake, or the joy they brought the other children. And it's from these feelings Ned decides to open his own pie shop, the Pie Hole. He hires a feisty waitress, Olive Snook, and things are as normal as they can be, until he befriends Private Investigator and professional gumshoe, Emerson Cod.
Emerson witnessed Ned accidentally bring a man back to life, and kill him again before the minute was up and he saw in the Pie Maker an incredible and lucrative opportunity to become Papen County's finest detective, with a little help from beyond the grave. With the allure of a $50,000 reward, Emerson convinces Ned to help him solve the mystery of drowned lonely tourist, Charlotte Charles. Upon realizing that this Charlotte Charles was in fact the same Charlotte Charles, of the monicker Chuck, he had shared his first kiss, Ned is conflicted. Intending to only wake Chuck for the sixty seconds allotted to him by the Powers that Be, he finds that having her alive and in his immediate vicinity makes him uncharacteristically impulsive. And it's with that impulsiveness that he doesn't touch lonely tourist Charlotte Charles, but instead takes her under his care and back to the Pie Hole. Emerson Cod is unhappy about this, but considerably more so when it's discovered that the funeral director was killed by association, and having been in the immediate vicinity himself, could have been the casualty instead.
Quickly Ned and Chuck reignite their childhood romance, much to the chagrin of feisty waitress Olive Snook, who has been in love with the Pie Maker for some time. Ned is oblivious to this until it's obviously revealed by her kissing him after a heroic act that saves her from a stampeding horse. It's often touched upon that Ned has feelings for both Olive and Chuck, as one is to have and one is to hold, though he remains in constant denial of the fact and tries to avoid touching Olive as if she too would die again forever if he slipped.
Though Emerson initially wants nothing to do with Chuck and her very presence seems to offend him, he also understands that Dead Girl and the Pie Maker are a package deal and it's this unlikely threesome that stumbles onto murders left and right and solves them with Ned's magic finger.
After Chuck's [initial] death, Ned visits grieving aunts Lily and Vivian, though it's later revealed that Lily is in fact Charlotte's mother. They haven't seen him since he was a little boy but throughout the series especially Vivian and Ned become close. He brings pie, and in an attempt to console her, he touches her hand with his. It's here he discovers that Vivian, like him, does not like to be touched and they begin to find kindred spirits in each other. Lily is nowhere near as warm and inviting and contrastingly, seems to trust Ned less and less the more she gets to know him. She has a very keen nose for deceit and tends to tote her shotgun after it so Ned mostly tries to stay out of her way.
Chuck, wanting to do something nice for her aunts, starts baking pear pies with gruyere in the crust and has them delivered to her childhood home. Unbeknownst to Chuck, Olive is the one to deliver these pies and starts forming a close friendship with Lily and Vivian. And unbeknownst to Olive, the pies hold a third and more sinister ingredient, a homeopathic mood enhancer designed to get her agoraphobic aunts out of the house. At first all of this is unbeknownst to Ned, until Vivian starts making regular appearances at the Pie Hole, in which Chuck has to hide herself lest Vivian know the dreadful truth. And Olive, thinking Chuck has faked her death, starts putting the pieces together.
When a seemingly charismatic man, Dwight Dixon, comes to the pie shop and announces he knows Chuck's father, their fragile world begins to fall in on itself. More suspicious still, he begins to court Vivian in hopes that she'll tell him the location of a certain watch meant to be buried with her niece. When he sees for himself that lonely tourist Charlotte Charles isn't dead at all, he begins to make sense of her empty coffin and can only glean that she still has the watch in question. He steals the watch from Chuck and all is well until Lily comes sniffing around, not wanting anyone suspect near her sister. Especially after the reveal that Lily slept with her sister's fiance Charles Charles and had Chuck in a nunnery.
Finding Charlotte's watch in Dwight's hotel room, as well as a matching watch belonging to Dwight himself, she snatches them both and makes to the window ledge. Thinking Chuck and Ned have stolen the watches, Dwight once again returns to the cemetery for answers. And Lily, not knowing her daughter is alive-again, leaves Dwight a note to meet her at the cemetery the next night. But he would never make it to their rendez-vous point because it is on that first night Ned and Chuck decide to wake up Charles Charles for only one minute and ask him if Dwight Dixon is a bad person. Ned takes 30 seconds to question Charles Charles about Dwight and gives the remaining 30 to Chuck to say hello and goodbye again to her twenty years deceased father, who she's only recently found out did not die of an innocent heart attack but innocent manslaughter by the hand--or magic finger--of her own boyfriend, Ned the Pie Maker.
As impulsively as Ned himself had decided to keep Charlotte alive, Chuck finds herself equally impulsive when her half-a-minute draws to a close. Slipping her leather glove over her father's hand, she tricks Ned into not redeading her father, and by cause killing Dwight Dixon who had been not a second away from killing them both. Chuck hides the secret of her father for as long as she can from Ned, instead seeking guidance from Emerson Cod. He helps her bury Dwight in Charles Charles' grave and agrees not to tell the Pie Maker until Chuck is ready. However, it's by chance that Ned discovers Charles Charles in his abandoned childhood home and everything is changed again.
Charles Charles agrees to play by Ned's "ridiculous rules" for the newly alive again, wearing wrappings over his every inch to hide his horrible "skin condition" which was actually twenty years of decayed flesh. But his one condition is that Ned not come near his daughter for the fear that she too could become dead again, forever. When Charles Charles witnesses the Pie Maker blatantly disregard their agreement, kissing Chuck through a sheet of plastic, they have what Ned describes as a tussle and Charles is gone. Having perceived Chuck as chosen Ned over him, he steals Ned's car and takes off, leaving behind a button. They find another brass button in Ned's childhood room and Chuck explains that her father had always left her a button to denote his watching over his own "little button." She thinks that he must be staying close, but as a child with very specific father abandonment issues, Ned isn't so quick to believe.
Vivian, already having been abandoned by one lover, takes Dwight Dixon's disappearance to a man she trusts, notorious gumshoe Emerson Cod. Emerson, of course, knows the truth, and throws Vivian off by telling her Dwight was a horrible man and she should stop looking. Instead, Vivian hires a team of Norwegian sleuths who happen to be Emerson's bitter rivals. Olive infiltrates the group to protect Ned, though she knows not what from, and together Ned and Olive steal the group's base on wheels, a van affectionately dubbed Mother.
Ned drives it off a cliff and as Olive and he dangle to uncertain death, he admits that he hasn't never thought about them together. After a mystery man saves their lives (believed to be Charles Charles by all, but who is in fact not Chuck's father but Ned's) Olive reads up on her double negatives and tries to decipher the meaning of Ned's words.
Randy Man is another friend of the Pie Maker's who likes to touch dead things. He's a taxidermist and weird though he is, Ned and Randy bond over their social awkwardness. He returns with a gift for Ned's recently acquired half-brothers and twins, Maurice and Ralston, who have an affinity for magic like Ned's own father. But not real magic like himself. It just so happens that childhood kidnappers of Olive Snook are breaking out of prison at that moment and choose then to find her at the Pie Hole.
Olive closes the shop when she sees them and it's revealed that they weren't kidnappers at all. Olive had run away and while the two cons had tried to get in touch with her parents, their calls went unanswered. When finally they returned Olive, they discovered that her parents hadn't noticed her missing at all. They call the police and have them arrested and Olive has been keeping in touch with them ever since. And in her letters, Ned soon finds out, he is depicted as her savior, and fiance, the Pie Maker whom she loves so much.
Not wanting to miss a beat, Ned plays along and pretends to be Olive's beloved. Confused Randy who is, unbeknownst to anyone, infatuated with Olive, watches on in jealousy. When a roadblock puts a hitch in their escape, Ned and Olive have no choice but to beg the hospitality of Lily and Vivian. It is here their fake engagement is announced but Ned continues pretending. Knowing the charade isn't real, it weighs on Olive's heart and she confronts Ned about it. He mispeaks, or perhaps not, in telling her he's merely "trying on" the relationship, leading her to tell everyone the truth. No one is angry with Olive, but the same cannot be said for Ned.
Asking the advice of friend Randy, the taxidermist tells him that Clark Kent doesn't get the girl and that super powers weren't meant to be squandered away. Ned agrees with him and sneaks out of the house which is now being swarmed with police thinking all of the people inside hostages of escaped cons. Ned touches a dead rhinoceros in the back of Randy's truck, intentioned project for the local zoo, and it provides a distraction for the two conmen to escape. Ned redeads the rhino within sixty seconds and is left feeling a peace with himself and his weirdness and returns to Chuck and the weird way of living he's grown accustomed to.
Peace doesn't stay however when Ned witnesses Randy holding Olive's hand and feels the bitter twinge of jealousy not previously identified.
Personality: Because of Ned's power he doesn't like to be touched, or touch others. However, he knows that people appreciate human contact sometimes and tries to step out of his comfort zone when he thinks someone might need it. There are a few times when this backfires on him, not being as adept at telling when touching is truly appropriate. For example when he touches Vivian's hand after Chuck's death to console her and she looks ridiculously more uncomfortable. But then, later on Vivian kisses his cheek as their friendship develops. This can also be seen in his unwieldy friendship with Olive in which his comforting touches are held by some hopeful part of her heart that believes they can still be together.
Ned can be very uncomfortable and socially awkward, but he always tries to do what's right. This can manifest itself selfishly (as with the undeading of his mother, Digby and Chuck), but he also holds a great deal of care and sympathy for other people. Despite his best efforts, he forms very close connections with his group of Olive, Emerson, Randy, Vivian, and even begrudgingly Lily. And obviously Chuck, whom he forms the closest relationship with and despite the fact that they cannot touch come to be involved romantically. He showcases his innovation by developing plastic devices that will allow them some modicum of comfort. He develops a sleeve so that he can hold her while she sleeps and a plastic divider in his car with a glove so that they can hold hands while driving. It's here we see that even Ned wants human contact, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Though he often seems like a pushover and will usually roll over in favor of other people's opinions, Ned has an obstinate streak in him. He's determined to get his way even when it's a bad idea or could put them in danger. As seen in Chuck and Ned's short lived quarrels however, even at his most determined Ned is powerless when Chuck's feelings are involved. He will always put her first no matter what other factors come into play. This is what prevents him from taking Emerson's advice in redeading her father and why he blames himself when Charles Charles leaves. All of this is apparent in Ned's quickly inflammatory but even quicker to deflate nature.
At the beginning of the series, Ned is almost always hesitant to touch dead things, knowing all too well what the consequences will be should they stay undeaded for longer than a minute. But we see him build confidence as it progresses until the untimely and unfortunately permanent reawakening of Charles Charles. It is here we see Ned's largest inner conflict of character in which he calls the two sides of himself Superman and Clark Kent. He decides to say 'no' to super and 'yes' to man in a defiant and short-lived attempt to lead a normalish life. He even ditches his storeroom full of dead fruit for live and vows never to touch dead things again. But when his friends need him most, he and his magic finger prevail and he finds that even if it's a little selfish, he likes being super, even for sixty seconds.
Also in constant progression is Ned's need for order and for things not to change. He has an explosive reaction to Chuck wanting to introduce "cup-pies" to his menu in an attempt to add a little of herself to the Pie Hole. Ned is firmly against the idea until he caves and once again accepts Chuck's happiness as his own. In the systematic way in which he times each minute to his deliberately monochromatic wardrobe, we see a man clinging to the past and eager to make sense of all the nonsense in his life. From beginning to end, Ned slowly works towards accepting change into his life and often doesn't even question it more recently. It's yet another beautiful thing Chuck has introduced and he's afraid of the new, and yet afraid to miss out even more.
At his core, Ned is still that abandoned child vying for his father's devotion. He is often petty and immature and reacts defensively when things are his fault. Having spent so much of his life essentially alone, Ned struggles with the addition of so many new people to his life all at once. It's a juggle he sometimes loses, as with the initial rejection he gives Randy Man. But as he comes to accept that these people all care about him, he's much warmer in his reception of them and seems to mature at not-quite-thirty more than he ever has in his life.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: Ned can bring dead things back to life with a single touch. But with a second touch, the undeaded thing is dead again forever. There's a catch: if he undeads a dead thing for more than 60 seconds, a second "equal" thing must die. Usually the closest in proximity, but always random.
As long as the undeaded thing doesn't touch Ned again, it will live a long and healthy life. Ned's dog Digby was undeaded 20 years ago and is still pretty lively.
i.e. If a person were to be undeaded a person would have to die. If there are no dead things in the immediate proximity that are within the same species it goes by size. For instance, a squirrel died to save Digby. But nothing but a human can replace a human life, presumably.
Since there aren't many dead things about the Tranqulity I don't think his powers will need to be limited. His weaknesses mainly revolve around social graces and touching people. I.e both are gross and he is bad at them. Mostly he keeps to himself though his time in the City has made him slightly more outgoing/trusting. It's also fed into his tendency to panic however and he seems more paranoid than ever before.
Inventory: a bunch of really boring monochromatic wardrobe choices including a charcoal sweater vest and a not-quite black wool peacoat, black winter gloves, a mysterious black key on a cord, boots underwear socks etc, a small book of photos from his time in CNC as well as a small leather-bound journal chronicling his time there. also a fake mustache, a 10-gallon hat, a texas tie and this shirt.
Appearance: Lee Pace's smug mug
Age: canonically 29 ¾ but after 2 years of CNC 31 ½
AU Clarification: Ned has been in Cape and Cowl's “City” on-and-off for two years now. He first enjoined in the summer of 2011 and he will be leaving the summer of 2013 to shoot off into outer space.
Over the years he has built a replica of his Pie Hole pie restaurant across from Central Park with Zatanna Zatara's help. They have become quite close to pretty much brother-sister status. He works with Jack Bauer to solve crimes and Zee and Jack are of a very small selection of people who know about Ned's ability even after all this time.
He has participated in several events and even had some of his own NPC supervillains to tend to. ROOMBAMAN was the first, a man backed up by a destructive army of robot vacuum cleaners. Ned committed arson to defeat him. And then there was PIE DIE, a woman who was sick of Ned taking away all of her EarthCake cake shop's clientele. She poisoned a restauranteur and framed Ned but when his friends broke him out she came after him slinging acid-filled pies. His retriever, Digby, came to save the day and Pie Die is now warming Ned's spot in superjail.
While discretion has always been Ned's first priority, he's undeaded several NPCs for the flow of game-wide plot without most people knowing. He also has attempted to fight alongside his superhero friends though he isn't very skilled in combat. Despite his nervous shell, he came to be quite brave and selfless during his stay and he will be much more willing to accept his new Space home than the Ned of old. He even had close CR with Han Solo and took a few rides in the Falcon, so. He's got this (maybe).
As he says in canon, he's ready to accept his Superman and denounce his Clark Kent. He's ready to be more active and use his abilities for something more than reward money. Though secret identities are still super important, obviously.
Also relevant should you chose to scroll through is the Pie Hole logs. Ned spent the majority of his time in the City here.
He's not too far astray from canon Ned but he is more confident and more self-aware and more proactive. For his first person I've left all his comm posts to show his evolution. He's ready for space yo.
S A M P L E S
Log Sample: Upon realizing Chuck was here, his first thought was that he was sorry for burning the letters he'd written her. Sorry he was intruding on her life yet again. Sorry she had never been able to see the City. And so, so very sorry she had been trapped here. He washed blue goo off himself and watched Digby shake off from the shower. There was nothing worse than wet-dog smell but everyone would just have to deal until they found her. Unless someone wanted to charitably towel off his dog for him. For some reason that was kind of an awkward thing to ask.
Once dressed, the pie maker-retriever duo made their rounds, methodically searching each nook and cranny. They stopped for neither man nor beast as they combed through the grav couches and traipsed through each holodeck. She would be here. She had to be. An ongoing mantra in his head that told him not to give up. They would be reunited and they would face this together, and he would tell her of his adventures as Superman in a city full of supermen greater than he.
Ned sat and brought the little bundle of photographs out of his coat pocket. Digby sat at a safe distance and glanced over them too. He missed all of his friends in the City, but that was selfish. Maybe if he had come here Chuck could go there and have an adventure of her own, as he'd always hoped for her. Instead she was stuck in Space Hell while he was living it up in Not New York, and it hurt. It hurt because he hadn't found her yet and pictures of his friends only made his heartache deeper.
He wanted to tell her about his revised Pie Hole menu, about how he'd come to accept and even love change. About his mini-magic show over the Network. About all the fears he'd faced and some he still harbored. But he didn't want her to be jealous. He didn't want her to feel as though she'd missed out.
Ned put the photos away and resigned not to tell her, choosing not to remember the time he'd resigned not to tell her he'd murdered her father and then proceeded to do just that—mere moments later.
Comms Sample: [Ned spent a few minutes fiddling with the device, shaking it for good measure before realizing... it was already on. April and Zatanna had always helped him with technology in the City. Oops.]
I'm pretty sure this thing is recording so... [He swallows, audibly, trying to not look completely panicked. He'd had some practice at that though he still manages to look overwhelmingly nauseous.] Hi? You all haven't seen a—Digby, have you? A Digby being a golden retriever by that moniker. I seem to have... misplaced him. Or maybe he's misplaced me.
[He goes a bit pale but trudges on, ever the brave little toaster. If the brave little toaster were nearly seven feet tall and it was more of an ironic nickname.]
I've always wanted to go to space, I mean, what little boy doesn't... when they're little boys, of course. After a while a person stops dreaming of the impossible and carries on with their lives on the ground. Until something, or somethings, impossible happen to them and then--
And then there's no telling what will happen, because no one knows their own future. Not really.
I mean, unless you meet a future version of yourself who tells you everything. But that's. A paradox, and those are very bad.
We should try to avoid those. Paradoxi. Who's with me?
[Okay that was a nervous tangent if ever he had one. He goes wide-eyed and mutters an introduction before ending the video;] Oh, and. I'm Ned. [A little wave, then, yeah. Nothing.]
here be Ned's CNC posts on DW & LJ.
note: Ned has left Digby behind in the City, with the Cityzens of <user name="capeandcowl".
Your Name: Ca
OOC Journal:
nothingtofearUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: n
Email + IM: cltonabun@gmail.com ; n0tJesus @ aim
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Spike (
allbloodyhail)C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Ned
Canon: Pushing Daisies
Original or Alternate Universe: AU
Canon Point: 2x11 “Window Dressed to Kill” + 7 months of game history / then dropped & updated → 2x12 “Water and Power” + 9 more months.
Number: 009
Setting: Ned lives in a fictional place called Papen County. His home town is just on the outskirts of this and is called Coeur d'Coeurs. There's no specific location ever sighted for this imaginary place, but I've taken it to be New England with the nearby lighthouses, lobster fisherman, beach community and so forth cited in specific episodes. Massachusetts or Maine are possible though there are decidedly different things about this world from our own. This world is saturated with color, almost uncomfortably bright. Everyone wears colorful clothing and everything is colorful. Ned is the only one in-series to wear dark colors exclusively, but he is also the only one presumably with an ability. Also, for all that this seems like a sleepy New England town, there sure are a lot of murders.
The technology seems no more than the 1940s down to the cars driven and the phones featured in houses. But then things like color cable TV, internet, and cell phones are referenced vaguely. This is an alternate universe okay. Here is the wiki.
History: Ned discovered from a young age that he was not like other children. He could bring the dead back to life. He tinkered with this power; sometimes by accident, never realizing a life was taken for each of the lives he gave back. But when his best friend, Digby the golden retriever, is hit by a truck he doesn't hesitate to bring him back. Unbeknownst to Ned, a squirrel takes Digby's place and as long as he never touches Digby again he may live forever. For nineteen years later, Digby doesn't look a day over the three years, two weeks, six days, five hours and nine minutes old he was the day he was brought back to life.
When his mother dies suddenly of a brain aneurysm, Ned touches her--incidentally, murdering his childhood friend Charlotte Charles' father, Charles Charles. Though he now understood the consequences of his strange ability, he rationalized the action with himself until seven hours later his mother kissed him goodnight and she went goodnight, forever. Charlotte, or as young Ned called her Chuck, shared their first and only kiss at their parent's adjoining funerals.
After his mother's second death, Chuck's father flew, and left him to spend the rest of his childhood at the Longborough School for boys. Ned didn't make very many friends, and with the separation of his best friend, the dog he couldn't touch, he often felt very lonely. One night when he was feeling especially homesick, Ned set about to create a little comfort in the form of a fresh-baked pie. The smell brought his roommate to the kitchen and they shared in a little comfort together. Ned's pie-shaped comfort came with a price, as the entire class wakes and he makes a pie for each and every one of them. He gets in a mess of trouble but it's this early on that his idea for the pie shop is born.
Digby finds Ned, against all odds, and Ned hides him in his trunk at the foot of his bed when people are around. This eases his loneliness and the pain of being the only boy who never receives any mail, but that all changes one year on Halloween. After hearing nothing from his father since he'd been shipped away, he receives a postcard. The postcard tells Ned his father's new address, and in search of answers he goes there to trick-or-treat. Digby and he go to find Ned's derelict dad, dressed in child cowboy sheets. It's then Ned discovers his father did not only run away, but ran towards and into the loving arms of a new family, and two new twin boys.
He returns to school to carry out his sentence, with a honey candy bar and a heavy heart. Ned goes on to undead a few more things, his roommate's rabbit and python, and Ned makes his first friend. Under the false pretenses of solving a murder in the woods, Ned undeads a gunshot victim and asks him who murdered him. While he discovers that the dead man was not killed by any mysterious killer, but an accidental discharge, he redeads the man just in time for the police to catch him in the act. Ned and his roommate are locked up, though his friend is rescued by his parents Ned rots a little longer, further cementing his utter abandonment.
Though the middle bit of Ned's life isn't covered, we do glean that after his unremarkable high school career he went on to have some sort of former training in culinary science. He never forgot the pies he snuck away from gym class to bake, or the joy they brought the other children. And it's from these feelings Ned decides to open his own pie shop, the Pie Hole. He hires a feisty waitress, Olive Snook, and things are as normal as they can be, until he befriends Private Investigator and professional gumshoe, Emerson Cod.
Emerson witnessed Ned accidentally bring a man back to life, and kill him again before the minute was up and he saw in the Pie Maker an incredible and lucrative opportunity to become Papen County's finest detective, with a little help from beyond the grave. With the allure of a $50,000 reward, Emerson convinces Ned to help him solve the mystery of drowned lonely tourist, Charlotte Charles. Upon realizing that this Charlotte Charles was in fact the same Charlotte Charles, of the monicker Chuck, he had shared his first kiss, Ned is conflicted. Intending to only wake Chuck for the sixty seconds allotted to him by the Powers that Be, he finds that having her alive and in his immediate vicinity makes him uncharacteristically impulsive. And it's with that impulsiveness that he doesn't touch lonely tourist Charlotte Charles, but instead takes her under his care and back to the Pie Hole. Emerson Cod is unhappy about this, but considerably more so when it's discovered that the funeral director was killed by association, and having been in the immediate vicinity himself, could have been the casualty instead.
Quickly Ned and Chuck reignite their childhood romance, much to the chagrin of feisty waitress Olive Snook, who has been in love with the Pie Maker for some time. Ned is oblivious to this until it's obviously revealed by her kissing him after a heroic act that saves her from a stampeding horse. It's often touched upon that Ned has feelings for both Olive and Chuck, as one is to have and one is to hold, though he remains in constant denial of the fact and tries to avoid touching Olive as if she too would die again forever if he slipped.
Though Emerson initially wants nothing to do with Chuck and her very presence seems to offend him, he also understands that Dead Girl and the Pie Maker are a package deal and it's this unlikely threesome that stumbles onto murders left and right and solves them with Ned's magic finger.
After Chuck's [initial] death, Ned visits grieving aunts Lily and Vivian, though it's later revealed that Lily is in fact Charlotte's mother. They haven't seen him since he was a little boy but throughout the series especially Vivian and Ned become close. He brings pie, and in an attempt to console her, he touches her hand with his. It's here he discovers that Vivian, like him, does not like to be touched and they begin to find kindred spirits in each other. Lily is nowhere near as warm and inviting and contrastingly, seems to trust Ned less and less the more she gets to know him. She has a very keen nose for deceit and tends to tote her shotgun after it so Ned mostly tries to stay out of her way.
Chuck, wanting to do something nice for her aunts, starts baking pear pies with gruyere in the crust and has them delivered to her childhood home. Unbeknownst to Chuck, Olive is the one to deliver these pies and starts forming a close friendship with Lily and Vivian. And unbeknownst to Olive, the pies hold a third and more sinister ingredient, a homeopathic mood enhancer designed to get her agoraphobic aunts out of the house. At first all of this is unbeknownst to Ned, until Vivian starts making regular appearances at the Pie Hole, in which Chuck has to hide herself lest Vivian know the dreadful truth. And Olive, thinking Chuck has faked her death, starts putting the pieces together.
When a seemingly charismatic man, Dwight Dixon, comes to the pie shop and announces he knows Chuck's father, their fragile world begins to fall in on itself. More suspicious still, he begins to court Vivian in hopes that she'll tell him the location of a certain watch meant to be buried with her niece. When he sees for himself that lonely tourist Charlotte Charles isn't dead at all, he begins to make sense of her empty coffin and can only glean that she still has the watch in question. He steals the watch from Chuck and all is well until Lily comes sniffing around, not wanting anyone suspect near her sister. Especially after the reveal that Lily slept with her sister's fiance Charles Charles and had Chuck in a nunnery.
Finding Charlotte's watch in Dwight's hotel room, as well as a matching watch belonging to Dwight himself, she snatches them both and makes to the window ledge. Thinking Chuck and Ned have stolen the watches, Dwight once again returns to the cemetery for answers. And Lily, not knowing her daughter is alive-again, leaves Dwight a note to meet her at the cemetery the next night. But he would never make it to their rendez-vous point because it is on that first night Ned and Chuck decide to wake up Charles Charles for only one minute and ask him if Dwight Dixon is a bad person. Ned takes 30 seconds to question Charles Charles about Dwight and gives the remaining 30 to Chuck to say hello and goodbye again to her twenty years deceased father, who she's only recently found out did not die of an innocent heart attack but innocent manslaughter by the hand--or magic finger--of her own boyfriend, Ned the Pie Maker.
As impulsively as Ned himself had decided to keep Charlotte alive, Chuck finds herself equally impulsive when her half-a-minute draws to a close. Slipping her leather glove over her father's hand, she tricks Ned into not redeading her father, and by cause killing Dwight Dixon who had been not a second away from killing them both. Chuck hides the secret of her father for as long as she can from Ned, instead seeking guidance from Emerson Cod. He helps her bury Dwight in Charles Charles' grave and agrees not to tell the Pie Maker until Chuck is ready. However, it's by chance that Ned discovers Charles Charles in his abandoned childhood home and everything is changed again.
Charles Charles agrees to play by Ned's "ridiculous rules" for the newly alive again, wearing wrappings over his every inch to hide his horrible "skin condition" which was actually twenty years of decayed flesh. But his one condition is that Ned not come near his daughter for the fear that she too could become dead again, forever. When Charles Charles witnesses the Pie Maker blatantly disregard their agreement, kissing Chuck through a sheet of plastic, they have what Ned describes as a tussle and Charles is gone. Having perceived Chuck as chosen Ned over him, he steals Ned's car and takes off, leaving behind a button. They find another brass button in Ned's childhood room and Chuck explains that her father had always left her a button to denote his watching over his own "little button." She thinks that he must be staying close, but as a child with very specific father abandonment issues, Ned isn't so quick to believe.
Vivian, already having been abandoned by one lover, takes Dwight Dixon's disappearance to a man she trusts, notorious gumshoe Emerson Cod. Emerson, of course, knows the truth, and throws Vivian off by telling her Dwight was a horrible man and she should stop looking. Instead, Vivian hires a team of Norwegian sleuths who happen to be Emerson's bitter rivals. Olive infiltrates the group to protect Ned, though she knows not what from, and together Ned and Olive steal the group's base on wheels, a van affectionately dubbed Mother.
Ned drives it off a cliff and as Olive and he dangle to uncertain death, he admits that he hasn't never thought about them together. After a mystery man saves their lives (believed to be Charles Charles by all, but who is in fact not Chuck's father but Ned's) Olive reads up on her double negatives and tries to decipher the meaning of Ned's words.
Randy Man is another friend of the Pie Maker's who likes to touch dead things. He's a taxidermist and weird though he is, Ned and Randy bond over their social awkwardness. He returns with a gift for Ned's recently acquired half-brothers and twins, Maurice and Ralston, who have an affinity for magic like Ned's own father. But not real magic like himself. It just so happens that childhood kidnappers of Olive Snook are breaking out of prison at that moment and choose then to find her at the Pie Hole.
Olive closes the shop when she sees them and it's revealed that they weren't kidnappers at all. Olive had run away and while the two cons had tried to get in touch with her parents, their calls went unanswered. When finally they returned Olive, they discovered that her parents hadn't noticed her missing at all. They call the police and have them arrested and Olive has been keeping in touch with them ever since. And in her letters, Ned soon finds out, he is depicted as her savior, and fiance, the Pie Maker whom she loves so much.
Not wanting to miss a beat, Ned plays along and pretends to be Olive's beloved. Confused Randy who is, unbeknownst to anyone, infatuated with Olive, watches on in jealousy. When a roadblock puts a hitch in their escape, Ned and Olive have no choice but to beg the hospitality of Lily and Vivian. It is here their fake engagement is announced but Ned continues pretending. Knowing the charade isn't real, it weighs on Olive's heart and she confronts Ned about it. He mispeaks, or perhaps not, in telling her he's merely "trying on" the relationship, leading her to tell everyone the truth. No one is angry with Olive, but the same cannot be said for Ned.
Asking the advice of friend Randy, the taxidermist tells him that Clark Kent doesn't get the girl and that super powers weren't meant to be squandered away. Ned agrees with him and sneaks out of the house which is now being swarmed with police thinking all of the people inside hostages of escaped cons. Ned touches a dead rhinoceros in the back of Randy's truck, intentioned project for the local zoo, and it provides a distraction for the two conmen to escape. Ned redeads the rhino within sixty seconds and is left feeling a peace with himself and his weirdness and returns to Chuck and the weird way of living he's grown accustomed to.
Peace doesn't stay however when Ned witnesses Randy holding Olive's hand and feels the bitter twinge of jealousy not previously identified.
Personality: Because of Ned's power he doesn't like to be touched, or touch others. However, he knows that people appreciate human contact sometimes and tries to step out of his comfort zone when he thinks someone might need it. There are a few times when this backfires on him, not being as adept at telling when touching is truly appropriate. For example when he touches Vivian's hand after Chuck's death to console her and she looks ridiculously more uncomfortable. But then, later on Vivian kisses his cheek as their friendship develops. This can also be seen in his unwieldy friendship with Olive in which his comforting touches are held by some hopeful part of her heart that believes they can still be together.
Ned can be very uncomfortable and socially awkward, but he always tries to do what's right. This can manifest itself selfishly (as with the undeading of his mother, Digby and Chuck), but he also holds a great deal of care and sympathy for other people. Despite his best efforts, he forms very close connections with his group of Olive, Emerson, Randy, Vivian, and even begrudgingly Lily. And obviously Chuck, whom he forms the closest relationship with and despite the fact that they cannot touch come to be involved romantically. He showcases his innovation by developing plastic devices that will allow them some modicum of comfort. He develops a sleeve so that he can hold her while she sleeps and a plastic divider in his car with a glove so that they can hold hands while driving. It's here we see that even Ned wants human contact, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Though he often seems like a pushover and will usually roll over in favor of other people's opinions, Ned has an obstinate streak in him. He's determined to get his way even when it's a bad idea or could put them in danger. As seen in Chuck and Ned's short lived quarrels however, even at his most determined Ned is powerless when Chuck's feelings are involved. He will always put her first no matter what other factors come into play. This is what prevents him from taking Emerson's advice in redeading her father and why he blames himself when Charles Charles leaves. All of this is apparent in Ned's quickly inflammatory but even quicker to deflate nature.
At the beginning of the series, Ned is almost always hesitant to touch dead things, knowing all too well what the consequences will be should they stay undeaded for longer than a minute. But we see him build confidence as it progresses until the untimely and unfortunately permanent reawakening of Charles Charles. It is here we see Ned's largest inner conflict of character in which he calls the two sides of himself Superman and Clark Kent. He decides to say 'no' to super and 'yes' to man in a defiant and short-lived attempt to lead a normalish life. He even ditches his storeroom full of dead fruit for live and vows never to touch dead things again. But when his friends need him most, he and his magic finger prevail and he finds that even if it's a little selfish, he likes being super, even for sixty seconds.
Also in constant progression is Ned's need for order and for things not to change. He has an explosive reaction to Chuck wanting to introduce "cup-pies" to his menu in an attempt to add a little of herself to the Pie Hole. Ned is firmly against the idea until he caves and once again accepts Chuck's happiness as his own. In the systematic way in which he times each minute to his deliberately monochromatic wardrobe, we see a man clinging to the past and eager to make sense of all the nonsense in his life. From beginning to end, Ned slowly works towards accepting change into his life and often doesn't even question it more recently. It's yet another beautiful thing Chuck has introduced and he's afraid of the new, and yet afraid to miss out even more.
At his core, Ned is still that abandoned child vying for his father's devotion. He is often petty and immature and reacts defensively when things are his fault. Having spent so much of his life essentially alone, Ned struggles with the addition of so many new people to his life all at once. It's a juggle he sometimes loses, as with the initial rejection he gives Randy Man. But as he comes to accept that these people all care about him, he's much warmer in his reception of them and seems to mature at not-quite-thirty more than he ever has in his life.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: Ned can bring dead things back to life with a single touch. But with a second touch, the undeaded thing is dead again forever. There's a catch: if he undeads a dead thing for more than 60 seconds, a second "equal" thing must die. Usually the closest in proximity, but always random.
As long as the undeaded thing doesn't touch Ned again, it will live a long and healthy life. Ned's dog Digby was undeaded 20 years ago and is still pretty lively.
i.e. If a person were to be undeaded a person would have to die. If there are no dead things in the immediate proximity that are within the same species it goes by size. For instance, a squirrel died to save Digby. But nothing but a human can replace a human life, presumably.
Since there aren't many dead things about the Tranqulity I don't think his powers will need to be limited. His weaknesses mainly revolve around social graces and touching people. I.e both are gross and he is bad at them. Mostly he keeps to himself though his time in the City has made him slightly more outgoing/trusting. It's also fed into his tendency to panic however and he seems more paranoid than ever before.
Inventory: a bunch of really boring monochromatic wardrobe choices including a charcoal sweater vest and a not-quite black wool peacoat, black winter gloves, a mysterious black key on a cord, boots underwear socks etc, a small book of photos from his time in CNC as well as a small leather-bound journal chronicling his time there. also a fake mustache, a 10-gallon hat, a texas tie and this shirt.
Appearance: Lee Pace's smug mug
Age: canonically 29 ¾ but after 2 years of CNC 31 ½
AU Clarification: Ned has been in Cape and Cowl's “City” on-and-off for two years now. He first enjoined in the summer of 2011 and he will be leaving the summer of 2013 to shoot off into outer space.
Over the years he has built a replica of his Pie Hole pie restaurant across from Central Park with Zatanna Zatara's help. They have become quite close to pretty much brother-sister status. He works with Jack Bauer to solve crimes and Zee and Jack are of a very small selection of people who know about Ned's ability even after all this time.
He has participated in several events and even had some of his own NPC supervillains to tend to. ROOMBAMAN was the first, a man backed up by a destructive army of robot vacuum cleaners. Ned committed arson to defeat him. And then there was PIE DIE, a woman who was sick of Ned taking away all of her EarthCake cake shop's clientele. She poisoned a restauranteur and framed Ned but when his friends broke him out she came after him slinging acid-filled pies. His retriever, Digby, came to save the day and Pie Die is now warming Ned's spot in superjail.
While discretion has always been Ned's first priority, he's undeaded several NPCs for the flow of game-wide plot without most people knowing. He also has attempted to fight alongside his superhero friends though he isn't very skilled in combat. Despite his nervous shell, he came to be quite brave and selfless during his stay and he will be much more willing to accept his new Space home than the Ned of old. He even had close CR with Han Solo and took a few rides in the Falcon, so. He's got this (maybe).
As he says in canon, he's ready to accept his Superman and denounce his Clark Kent. He's ready to be more active and use his abilities for something more than reward money. Though secret identities are still super important, obviously.
Also relevant should you chose to scroll through is the Pie Hole logs. Ned spent the majority of his time in the City here.
He's not too far astray from canon Ned but he is more confident and more self-aware and more proactive. For his first person I've left all his comm posts to show his evolution. He's ready for space yo.
S A M P L E S
Log Sample: Upon realizing Chuck was here, his first thought was that he was sorry for burning the letters he'd written her. Sorry he was intruding on her life yet again. Sorry she had never been able to see the City. And so, so very sorry she had been trapped here. He washed blue goo off himself and watched Digby shake off from the shower. There was nothing worse than wet-dog smell but everyone would just have to deal until they found her. Unless someone wanted to charitably towel off his dog for him. For some reason that was kind of an awkward thing to ask.
Once dressed, the pie maker-retriever duo made their rounds, methodically searching each nook and cranny. They stopped for neither man nor beast as they combed through the grav couches and traipsed through each holodeck. She would be here. She had to be. An ongoing mantra in his head that told him not to give up. They would be reunited and they would face this together, and he would tell her of his adventures as Superman in a city full of supermen greater than he.
Ned sat and brought the little bundle of photographs out of his coat pocket. Digby sat at a safe distance and glanced over them too. He missed all of his friends in the City, but that was selfish. Maybe if he had come here Chuck could go there and have an adventure of her own, as he'd always hoped for her. Instead she was stuck in Space Hell while he was living it up in Not New York, and it hurt. It hurt because he hadn't found her yet and pictures of his friends only made his heartache deeper.
He wanted to tell her about his revised Pie Hole menu, about how he'd come to accept and even love change. About his mini-magic show over the Network. About all the fears he'd faced and some he still harbored. But he didn't want her to be jealous. He didn't want her to feel as though she'd missed out.
Ned put the photos away and resigned not to tell her, choosing not to remember the time he'd resigned not to tell her he'd murdered her father and then proceeded to do just that—mere moments later.
Comms Sample: [Ned spent a few minutes fiddling with the device, shaking it for good measure before realizing... it was already on. April and Zatanna had always helped him with technology in the City. Oops.]
I'm pretty sure this thing is recording so... [He swallows, audibly, trying to not look completely panicked. He'd had some practice at that though he still manages to look overwhelmingly nauseous.] Hi? You all haven't seen a—Digby, have you? A Digby being a golden retriever by that moniker. I seem to have... misplaced him. Or maybe he's misplaced me.
[He goes a bit pale but trudges on, ever the brave little toaster. If the brave little toaster were nearly seven feet tall and it was more of an ironic nickname.]
I've always wanted to go to space, I mean, what little boy doesn't... when they're little boys, of course. After a while a person stops dreaming of the impossible and carries on with their lives on the ground. Until something, or somethings, impossible happen to them and then--
And then there's no telling what will happen, because no one knows their own future. Not really.
I mean, unless you meet a future version of yourself who tells you everything. But that's. A paradox, and those are very bad.
We should try to avoid those. Paradoxi. Who's with me?
[Okay that was a nervous tangent if ever he had one. He goes wide-eyed and mutters an introduction before ending the video;] Oh, and. I'm Ned. [A little wave, then, yeah. Nothing.]
here be Ned's CNC posts on DW & LJ.
note: Ned has left Digby behind in the City, with the Cityzens of <user name="capeandcowl".