#brickhouse

In light of my Brainbook x Blond Blazer fanart, some have been wanting to hear some of my headcanons regarding the two. Before I write a post about what I think their relationship was/is like, I thought I'd do two posts about Brainbook and Blond Blazer individually first! These are just my interpretations of them! Links: 1. Brainbook - Kassandra 'Cordova' Brown 2. Blond Blazer - Amanda Herrington / Headcanons (pending link) 3. Brainbook x Blond Blazer - Brainblaze / Headcanons

General Information

32 years old

Canadian, specifically from Rivière-à-Pierre, a small town in the province of Quebec - she speaks Quebecois fluently, even after living in the USA the majority of her life.

Diagnosed as a ‘gifted kid’ when she was around 7 years old, clocking in with an IQ of 150. Lanter, she got reasset and clocked in roughly above 200

Friends, family and co-workers sometimes call her Kass or Kassy.

Blazer/Mandy likes to call her Cordy, one of the few people who make mention of her middle name. Rough Backstory Outline

Her parents were dysfunctional from the beginning, having stayed together and married only after her mother got pregnant with her. The parents stayed together for several years, fighting, bickering and cheating on one another. Her mother tried to shield her from it, her father not so much. Her father would often come into her room, crying and complaining about their marital problems when her mother wasn’t home to stop him. 

Her earliest memories of her father was him crying to her, thinking that because of her obviously heightened IQ, she would be mature enough to listen to his moaning and groaning.

Spoiler!! She wasn’t.

When she turned 12 years old, her mother found out that her father had impregnated a woman five years ago and had led a double life. Thus, ending in a heated divorce.

Her mother won the custody battle two years later, resulting in her taking 14 year old Kassandra and moving far away from Kass’ hometown. Specifically, moving to south Michigan, America, because they had some friends down there that offered shelter and support until they were back on their feet.

Kassandra and her mother had a rocky relationship until she moved out - since then they have been rekindling and building a better relationship to one another that both are very grateful for.

Kassandra, her father and her brother are relatively stand off ish. There was an attempt on Kassandra's side, but it never really worked. Education

Kassandra skipped through school like a freight train, graduating at 15 years old and starting a criminology and psychology degree at 16 - finishing with a master’s degree at 21 years old.

At 22 she started another degree at Pennsylvania State University in Forensic Science. 

After finishing both degrees at 26 years old, she worked as a crime scene investigator, staying in Pennsylvania.

Only a year later, at 27 years old, she was asked by Blond Blazer to assist SDN’s DTLA Branch as an investigator. She took the job and hasn’t looked back since. Personality

Kassandra is a straight shooter, no nonsense kind of woman.

She has a sort of poise that makes you hold your breath and straighten your back in her presence. She always looks into your eyes and hardly uses any filler words - making her come across as quite intense.

She’s pragmatic to a point that she neglects her or other people’s feelings for it. She’s had to work on that a LOT.

Very careful who she surrounds herself with - she's got a select, small group of actual friends who she cares deeply about.

Thinks before she acts

She can rationalise away any feelings that she might have, positive and negative, but hardly takes the time to actually feel those feelings. It's got better since she started therapy.

Other random 'facts'

Doesn’t drink coffee, it gives her extremely bad migraines - but will drink turkish tea in stupid amounts. 

She’s got a PhD in Forensic Science and a masters Criminology - but God FORBID she has to cook from a recipe. She can cook home recipes from memory, just winging it, but as soon as she has to follow a recipe and she’s done for.

20/40 vision - usually just wears glasses, especially at work, but when she’s on the field, she wears contacts - God forbid her glasses break, she doesn’t get paid nearly enough for that. 

Swears like a sailor but knows exactly when to shut it off - no one at work knows the shit she says when she’s off the clock. She’s especially bad when she’s pissed off or angry, preferring her french swear words to the english.

Workaholic to an extreme extent - her work is her life, she loves it, so she doesn’t realise how badly it can affect her until she’s passing out on her desk daily.

She’s got some basic self defense skills, but is way better with a pistol. Her favorite is the Walther PDP. 

Has really weird, niché knowledge that she’ll drop randomly. Even though she has a lot of knowledge and interests, she hardly ever speaks in length about it, keeping her remarks or ‘’Um…actually’’ moments refined to small quips or one liners instead.

She has INSANE memory - she can and will notice and remember everything you tell her and recall it to a T. Sometimes it comes so naturally to her that it’s almost a little off putting.

Goes to visit her father and half brother once every year, more of a courtesy to family ‘obligations’ rather than it being a good time. Mostly it’s strained and full of tension, so it’s a holiday she doesn’t particularly look forward to.

She has PTSD, C-PTSD (mostly from her work expierences), GAD (generalised Anxiety) and depression - though she attends therapy two times a week and takes her medication. Having such a high IQ means that everything is worth overthinking to a self destructive extent, she's only recently learnt how to deal with it healthily.

Will smoke when a cig is offered, but will not ever buy her own pack. Worklife

She shares almost nothing of her personal life with her colleagues - most didn’t even know that she worked with the police before coming to DTLA. 

She’ll go drinking with her team now and again after work, keeping herself from getting too drunk and leaving before the evening gets too wild (to the dismay of Sweettalker and Brickhouse specifically).

Loves her Whiskey Sour or Tequila Sunrise

Would rather strangle herself than drink anything related to vodka

Works mostly from the office, but will get called out to do some onsite investigation stuff or negotiations. 

She’s been shot once and critically injured when she was on a scene - since then, she doesn’t get out as much and when she does, she is obligated to wear a bullet proof vest.

This AU is called DLTA shenanigans or DLTA-S for short. Basically, how I imagined Phenomaman's time with the DLTA team before coming to the Z-team. The idea is that because the DLTA branch are the highest ranking superheroes in California, they must have dealt with some crazy, life threatening/world ending stuff since they're considered the best of the best. With that comes trauma and despite the fact that they're real sweethearts, they cope in unique ways that involve explosives, booby traps, sneak attacks, training and more. They don't do anything with malicious intent and they do have breaks where they can relax but sometimes people can see Brainbook disarming an active radioactive bomb, Pom Pom dodging through missiles in the hallway, Sweetalker doing paperwork in a freezing cold room, Brickhouse and Phenomaman tanking traps set by Equilibrium, getting grenades randomly tossed into their break rooms, etc. This is so that they can keep vigilant, not slack off and be prepared for anything. There's always a safe switch if it gets too much but rarely is it ever used.

Some time during his time with the Z-team, Phenomaman comments about something he went through that made everyone stop and stare at him in horror. Maybe he was reminded of the stuff he gets up to with the DLTA team and that's how Robert and the Z-team realise that DLTA are insane and Phenomaman is considered tame compared to them.

Ps: This may be wishful thinking and I apologise if it's not canon but I like to think that DLTA cares for Katon-Ur. They unfortunately had to give him space after he was dropped but were able to contact him after a while.

Love these.

Downtown Los Angeles is legit like the New York of the west coast, everything goes. Torrence is a relatively small city in comparsion despite having it's own wacky supers.

If there's ever a situation where the Z Team have to collaborate for missions or training purposes, they're gonna be shocked at how unhinged the main DTLA are together.

One DTLA member is chill. More than one, and you got them wrestling like rowdy siblings. Their idea of a good natured prank is tossing a boulder at one another.

I also agree that the DTLA team cares about Phenomaman, but they recognised that he needed a break from work after his break up. They certainly didn't expect him to start haunting Blazer's place of work and becoming a member of the Z-Team.