Name: Winona Brooks
Species: Bugbear
Occupation: Scare Actor (Bigfeetâs Adventureland year round and for hire at Halloween)
Age: 32 Years Old
Played By: Lolaf
Face Claim: Margot Robbie
âPeople get spooked by ghost stories but humans are just about the damn scariest thing on this planet, everything else is just a distraction.â
TW: Medical blood, drug manipulation, underage drinking
Winona used to be like many other bugbears, raised in and around a small forest town she was exposed to both the world of her ursine cousins and those of humans, it made it easier to blend in amongst them, something she and her family had to do to feed both on actual food and on fear. But more than that it meant Winona got to have friends her own age, sheâd been the only cub born to her parents and being as close to people as they were most other bears knew well enough to avoid the town so humans became her first friends. Of course sheâd been taught to keep her true nature secret, she had learned how to keep so much of herself from peeking through and dang if she wasnât good at it. Sometimes her parents would joke that if they hadnât seen her turn into a bear themselves that theyâd assume theyâd just had a human daughter. The biggest thing Winona never really mastered was fear, she was well known amongst the other children as fearless willing to do, frankly, inadvisable things just because it seemed like fun. She absolutely earned a few broken bones and more than a few scrapes and bruises. But it also earned her the respect of the local children as their fearless leader!
And so her early life went, well into her late teens before she started to become significantly more reckless, in truth Winona didnât want to keep the secret of her reality from her friends but she had heard the horror stories from her parents. (The irony of bugbears trying to scare their children into good behavior was not lost on her.) But she was sure to always be careful, she never lost control, she was in total control so why not get a little adventurous?
And nothing more adventurous than a little underage drinking. It was only going to be a bit, it was going to be around friends, it was going to be totally safe. It was going to be. But Winona did not know just how easy it was to lose her inhibitions, and that little part of her that wanted to share her secret with her friends⊠Well it won out.
What happened next was a blur, screaming and people rushing past her, voices yelling about who they needed to call and in the middle of it in a euphoria of delicious fear was Winona, at some point new people showed up, they yelled at her and then-
When Winona woke up next her head was pounding and the white clinical light did very little to help her. This would be her most vivid memory of what she would eventually learn was a lab, the white hell as she took to calling it. In the end itâs not clear exactly how long she was kept there, poked and prodded, blood drawn and transfused in equal measure, she was given foods and drink, and the most prominent thing Winona understood was that her mind never cleared up to where it had been when sheâd first woken up. It took much longer than she would ever want to admit to eventually learn they were keeping her docile through the food.
Luckily for all the time theyâd spent studying Winona they never learned the one thing that would have saved them, not to fear her. It was an explosive escape, the anger that flowed through her as she swatted massive paws at anyone who stood in her way, giving anyone with a weapon illusions of what had been her own personal hell for who even knew how long. And eventually she was free. Now a young woman well into her 20s Winona did the only thing she could think to do, she went to the one place sheâd been told to go if she ever had to go into hiding.
It grated on her, it never sat well with her how the town played up their connection with the supernatural, but gave her the perfect place to hide, to build herself a new life and easily accessible fear to eat upon. Itâs different now though, she knows what fear is, has felt it more viscerally than most other bugbears, she is no longer totally immune. And she never let herself get complacent, let herself trust humans again. Never again.
Personality: Anxious, empathetic, enervated, observant, critical, reliable, petty, self-sufficient, untrusting
Has a long scar on her left bicep (From her escape)
Skilled at various aspects of costuming but especially sfx makeup
Her bear form, an unusually large Grizzly, is well known by wildlife enthusiasts as âBig Bardaâ she has often been spotted in the pines from hiking trails but despite many attempts Big Barda has managed to evade capture for tracking. It is believed her territory is quite extensive.