Name:Vanellope von Schweetz
Nickname:Kid, The Glitch, and many, many others
Age:Appears around 9; true age (when her game was first plugged in) is at least over 15 years
Gender:Female
Species:Artificial Intelligence; Humanoid program
Position:Good, with a hint of chaos and mischief
Powers/Abilities/Techniques/Skills:“Look wise guy, I know I’m a racer. I can feel it in my code.”
First and foremost is Vanellope’s skill in racecar driving. It’s not just her greatest talent, but also her passion. When her game’s code was rewritten, her skills were reset as well and she forgot how to drive; however, her true programming showed through in the end and she learned very quickly.
“Glitch!”
Also known as Pixlexia. A side-effect of her game’s code being rewritten was a persistent glitch that caused her to jump frames and “teleport” when excited or overwhelmed. She managed to gain enough control over her glitching to turn it into a secondary skill of hers instead of a complete hindrance, though glitching with her kart takes more energy than when she does it by herself. Outside the virtual world, she is literally unable to glitch, which causes problems with her internal programming.
-
In-program: While in the games or Space Paranoids, Vanellope can travel up to five feet away at a time, and she can jump in quick succession three times before she needs to recharge for about
one post. With her kart, it takes
two posts to recharge any sort of jump, and she cannot jump in quick succession. During times of extreme stress, she may lose control of her ability, glitching randomly or being unable to glitch at all.
-
Out-of-program: In the real world, Vanellope is unable to glitch. When she tries, she encounters a fatal program error that causes her to reboot; a process that leaves her vulnerable for five to ten seconds, but it won’t stop her internal program from trying when her pixlexia gets out of hand. The process starts with about three seconds of a minor seizure as her program tries to glitch, followed by two to seven seconds of freezing in place until she returns to normal. During this short period of time, she doesn’t realize any time has passed. Her brain will also sometimes glitch, causing her to repeat words or skip words while speaking without realizing it.
“Because if you die outside your own game, you don’t regenerate. Ever. Game over.”
Now that her code has been fixed, no matter what damage Vanellope endures in Sugar Rush, she will always regenerate. However this only applies to Sugar Rush; if she leaves her game, she will not regenerate and all deaths are counted as final. Her kart can also only be regenerated in the Sugar Rush game. Being attacked by Heartless within the original game is also something with unknown consequences; no one is willing to take the risk because viruses can disturb the regeneration command.
She’s also rather agile, capable of climbing and scrambling up trees quickly and hanging upside down with no problem, and has a lot of energy.
Weapon/Items:Special Items
Though it's not something she can exactly carry around easily, Vanellope has her race kart, dubbed the
Lickety-Split Two. Like the other karts of Sugar Rush, it’s made out of a sweets: four cookie sandwich wheels, an uneven chocolate coating, a body of cake and wafer cookies, a buttload of sprinkles and frosting, and an iced signature by herself and her best friend. Compared to the other racers, her kart looks like a bit of a mess, but she loves it for its uniqueness and the memories behind it. It's usually in Sugar Rush, but she might bring it out of the game with her.
She also has
racing gear, including goggles and gloves, though she only wears them when she really expects a dangerous run.
Weapons and Supplies
Candy cane slingshot: Made of red and white candy cane and red licorice.
Jawbreakers: The typical ammo for the candy slingshot. Doesn't hit as hard as a piece of lead shot, but you probably still don't want to get hit by one of these, lest you risk a nasty bruise or cracked teeth.
Cherry bombs: Hand-held grenade-like cherries that detonate after the stems are pulled. They have a small explosion radius and are relatively weak in damage.
Lifesavers: Gives a boost to energy and speed that lasts for
three posts, but watch out! The sugar high given by these candies can sometimes end with a crash! They come in a variety of flavors, and in packs of five; Vanellope only has one pack of these on her at a time, which she must restock from Sugar Rush.
(Warning: Eating more than one of these candies at a time is known to cause accelerated heartrate, shortness of breath, and major sugar crash. Symptoms of sugar crash include: muscle fatigue, lethargy, irritation, headache, and light-headedness.)Picture: Vanellope.Appearance:Vanellope was created in the style of chibi artwork with a sweets theme, like the other racers of Sugar Rush. She’s only about three feet tall, with dark hair, a round face, big hazel eyes, and usually a smile. Her typical outfit doesn’t have a specific candy theme to it. Her hair is usually pulled up into a ponytail, tied with a red licorice strip and dotted with bits of sprinkle and peppermint (something akin to a kid’s dirty hair in her game). She wears a light blue hoodie, and her skirt appears to be made out of peanut butter cup wrappers. Her stockings are a mismatched blue and white with candy-cane stripes for their design.
Personality:Vanellope has the energy of a kid on a sugar rush, which turns her into something of a troublemaker. She doesn’t tire easily, spending much of her time either running or racing, and does her best to have fun. After being bullied for years by the other racers and residents of Sugar Rush, though, she’s grown a wicked sense of humor that doesn’t quite match her sugary world. She can be a little insulting, though her insults tend to be childish, and she’s got feisty streak and is quick to think on her feet. Despite everything that’s happened to her, she maintains a fairly cheerful and optimistic outlook, and she’s a forgiving person who can’t really hold a grudge.
Vanellope is a determined individual, especially when it comes to racing. She put hours of hard work into creating her own hand-made race kart, and every time doubt crossed her mind, she pushed it away and continued working with even more resolve than before. She’s not above tricks and petty thievery because she rationalizes that it’s okay to do because she always intends to help and repay the damages caused by her mischief.
She’s the type that dreams of the future but lives firmly in the present, which gives her a fearless streak. She’ll do potentially dangerous stunts without much worry for her own safety until she actually gets herself into trouble. Despite her gutsiness and selfish drives, though, she’s willing to put her friends’ lives above her own.
Original World: Sugar Rush, Game Central Station in Litwak’s Family Fun Center, Radiant Garden
Current World: Radiant Garden
Movie/Video Game(s): Wreck-it Ralph (2012)
History:Back when Radiant Garden was a bustling city of water and life, a little arcade known as Litwak’s Family Fun Center was the place to be for children of all ages. The assortment of games kept all sorts of people entertained. One of those games was a candy-based racing game known as Sugar Rush—a world within a world.
Princess Vanellope von Schweetz was the official leader of the Sugar Rush game. Even if the princess title called for frilly pink dresses and candy scepters, she found more enjoyment in gearing up in a racing suit and zooming along the track in her car—and hopefully lapping her opponents in the process. It was a pretty good life, all things considered, but being princess meant that she rarely if ever left her game, no matter how much she wanted to visit Game Central Station.
Game Central Station was located in the power strip that connected all the arcade games together. Characters could mingle, visiting other games during closing hours and having a bit of fun. What most people—even the game characters themselves—didn’t realize was that Game Central Station was connected to other programs via the Radiant Garden Power Grid. The Sugar Rush racers were more ignorant than usual when it came to the workings of Game Central Station—they had so many things to do in their own game that they rarely saw reason to leave. Because of this, they didn’t know much about other games, which was what almost caused their downfall.
Sugar Rush was hacked and reprogrammed by a rogue character named Turbo. In an effort to keep Vanellope from ever interfering, Turbo had locked away the memories of everyone in Sugar Rush so that they all believed Vanellope was a glitch—a tic in the program never meant to exist—and tried to delete her. Such heavy reprogramming indeed caused glitches in Vanellope’s code, which only enforced that belief in the brainwashed citizens of Sugar Rush. With no foreseeable interefence, Turbo added himself to the game under the guise of King Candy, changing his appearance in the process.
For years she had lived at the fringes of the game, unable to leave due to her coding glitch and being forced to evade King Candy’s police force. But she would watch the races from a distance, and deep down, something was telling her that she should be out there with the others and having a blast. She went as far as creating her own kart, though without access to proper supplies, the best she could do was pedal power. But even with a kart, she still couldn’t race—she didn’t have a gold coin needed to enter. At least until one medal came into Sugar Rush with a Hero’s Duty escape pod and a Stinkbrain named Wreck-it Ralph.
It was only because of the game-jumping Ralph that Sugar Rush—and the whole arcade—was saved. He helped Vanellope get a new car and race, helped uncover the Turbo’s menacing plot, and helped to destroy all the virus Cy-Bugs from the light gun game Hero’s Duty that had also invaded the game. The game was reset, unlocking the memories of everyone in Sugar Rush. Vanellope patched up things with the other racers after a bit of (somewhat cruel) joking. But living it out in the candy wild had made Vanellope even more restless and thirsty for adventure, and she decided that she’d rather be a president than a princess cooped up in the castle all day.
However, the fun didn’t last too long. Within a year, something outside of the arcade went wrong. Unbeknownst to the characters, the Heartless were invading Radiant Garden, turning it into an empty shell of what it once was. All of the games went into a slumber for nearly a decade until the darkness that had infiltrated the outside world was pushed back and the people who had escaped the destruction returned. As the Radiant Garden Power Grid was rebooted, so were the games. Vanellope woke up to a familiar but very different world, and she like many others wanted to investigate what had happened, and where these viruses with black and red heart-shaped emblems that had begun to appear in the games were coming from.
She came across a train she didn’t recognize in a hidden nook of Game Central Station and rather impulsively decided to take it to see where it went. Somehow she managed to wander into a strange… Game wasn’t the right word. A program. She wandered into a program where more of the weird viruses lurked. They chased her relentlessly, forcing her to abandon the train and flee.
Unknown to her, she had stumbled upon the Space Paranoids, about a year after the MCP had been taken care of by Sora, Tron, and company. The computer in one of the rooms had caught her interest, and she wondered if she could get some information on what was going on in the outside world from it. Instead, she was hit by the machine’s scanner and sent into the real world, where a whole new adventure awaits.
(As of right now, Litwak’s Family Fun Center is still closed.)
Role Playing Sample: (Just for the sample, I used some of the other racers. Hope that’s okay!)
“Whoa!” Vanellope hit the breaks, the Lickety-Split Two skidding across the track and stopping just inches away from the finish line. Behind her, Taffyta and The Swizz screeched to a halt, and the other racers further behind them began to slow down. Vanellope cut the engine of her kart and lifted the goggles from her eyes. “What the heck is that thing?” she asked, pointing at the thin mechanical program standing on the finish line. It was like a mini robotic humanoid, with glowing yellow eyes and fan-like arms and a futuristic design on its body, and it was holding up the practice run by just standing around like a weirdo. Vanellope had never seen a program like that in the arcade before. Was it from a new game or something? No, there hadn’t been any new games installed recently…
“Maybe it’s friendly?” Rancis suggested nervously.
Worth a shot, Vanellope supposed. She jumped out of her kart and slowly made her way to the mini program with a wave. “Hey little guy, are you new around here? What’s your name?”
The program made a buzzing noise. Maybe it couldn’t say anything. It tilted its head and hobbled its way in a circle around Vanellope with a kind of funny walk, its arms spinning as it moved closer. Vanellope stepped back and held out her hands defensively. “Whoa, slow down tiger! You lost or something?”
“Vanellope, maybe we should leave it alone,” Candlehead said. “It looks kinda freaky.” The other racers nodded.
“Oh, come on guys, sometimes the freaky things are the coolest—whoa!” Vanellope had seen the program charging up only a moment before it shot a narrow laser in her direction. She glitched away out of reach, and the program spun its arms again with a high-pitched beep. “Oh, a tough-guy, huh? You wanna fight? I warn ya, I’m no push-over!”
A gasp. “Vanellope, look out!”
Vanellope spun around to see three more of the yellow-eyed programs appear in swirls of purple static and surround her. “Oh, come on, that’s not playing fair!” They didn’t respond, though. They had a mindless sort of look to them in the way they moved, like they were working on pure instinct alone. They kind of reminded her of the Cy…
The programs fired again. Vanellope’s eyed widened and she glitched back to her kart. Realization hit her like a ton of candy bricks. “They’re viruses!” she shouted, starting up the engine. The last time dangerous programs like this were let loose in Sugar Rush… “Come on, we gotta go warn the others!” She hit the gas and the kart sped forward, making a beeline for the castle without waiting for the other racers.
Questions/Comments/Suggestions?I hope Litwak’s being in Radiant Garden is all right. Actually, I hope the whole history flies.
Edit: Added limits and changed the pixlexia!
*changes lifesavers appropriately* Explicit time limit needed?
Good to see you back. Anyway, I made the changes necessary. Is the jumping in quick succession still okay if the one-post-charge is used?