Dae Pang (Cataclysmic Gerosha)

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Character bio
Dae Pang (nee Tahn) is a museum curator in The Gerosha Chronicles of Dozerfleet Comics. She is the surviving wife of the late Joo-Chin Pang, and the mother of Sodality of Gerosha Support Staff member and SCALLOP agent Hea Pang. She is also an ally of the Gray Champion. Dae made her debut in the Hyper-Uber-Proto Gerosha (Earth-G0) The Gray Champion: Modern Legend, which became the basis for The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition; and was originally known only as "Mrs. Pwong." Joo-Chin's death, a defining moment in her life and personality, was canon as far back as 2001 in project development. However, the Pangs weren't officially given their current names until 2011 in Comprehensive Gerosha (Earth-G6.) Most details of this have transferred over to Cataclysmic Gerosha (Earth-G7) with little issue. Dae returns in The Gray Champion: Chillingworth's Revenge, which proves to be her final appearance. Her death becomes one of many motivators for Hea to join the Sodality later on - and to see an end to the Society of the Icy Finger responsible for the "Chillingworth" that murders Dae.

Early life
Dae was born to a Korean mother and American father in 1961, as the former was rescued from North Korean soldiers by the latter a decade earlier. Dae's parents installed in her a strong love for American history, and her grandfather allowed her to inherit his massive fortune and personal collection of relics. Dae strived early on to become a curator and museum owner. As she grew up in the Boston area, her dream eventually came true. She later met Joo-Chin Pang, a Korean American fisherman living in the area. They were married in June of 1987. They led their lives successfully for many years, but longed to have a child. Hea Pang was born to them in 1995.

Motivation for activism
They enjoyed five more years of pure happiness, but that happiness came to an end in 2000. An event that Joo-Chin's boss insisted he go to with the family turned out to be a meeting at Tufts University. However, when the event turned out to be what is now dubbed "Fistgate," Joo-Chin left early in disgust. However, his boss threatened to fire him if he didn't sit back down. Joo-Chin refused, insisting he and Dae leave with young Hea immediately. This infuriated the boss, who sent two others to follow Joo-Chin and "drag" him and his family back to the presentation. The other workers got pushy, but Joo-Chin insisted Dae and Hea proceed to the car and ignore the men. However, one of the men proceeded to advance towards the girls, threatening to grab Hea specifically so she could be "educated" "properly."

Joo-Chin lost his temper, immediately attacking the man that threatened Hea. However, a third fisherman arrived and the three men ganged up on Joo-Chin. Dae whispered to Hea to run for help, while Dae stayed behind and screamed for the men to let her husband go. Hea was unable to find an officer, but did find a man named Jerry Birmanger. Birmanger arrived at the scene with a gun. This allowed Joo-Chin and Dae to get in the car with Hea. However, one of the three men pulled out a pistol and started shooting at the Pangs as they drove away. Birmanger shot, back, and a full-on firefight ensued. Birmanger eventually lost the ordeal, managing only to injure one of the three men that attacked Joo-Chin. Police refused to file charges on any of the three men, because one of the officers to hear both adult Pangs' testimony of what happened just so happened to be a lesbian. However, LGBT groups in the area immediately reacted to the incident. They threatened to defame Dae and get her museum shut down. They succeeded in destroying Joo-Chin's credit rating, and in lying about the reason he was fired. The corruption and outrage involved inspired Dae Pang to join MassResistance and similar other movements, so as to see justice done for what the LGBT Mafia did to her husband.

Losing Joo-Chin
That former boss turned out to be none other than Richard Menzel, who immediately went on to become a part of an illegal sex trafficking ring dubbed "Gleeful-N-Young." Richard's new boss was Clyde Spendelworth, who also became the CEO of Sleet Mountain in 2009. In 2006, however, Menzel decided to seek personal revenge on Joo-Chin for surviving the ruining of his credit score and finding another job as a fisherman at a different company; which Menzel saw as defying "the way things ought to be." He sabotaged the motor to Joo-Chin's fishing boat, guaranteeing that it could not quickly make its way back to shore in the event of anything going wrong. Sure enough, a storm picked up. The boat became stranded, and only some of the crew survived long enough to call the Coast Guard for help. Joo-Chin got washed overboard, and his body was never recovered. He was declared dead at sea within a month's time. There was some evidence that Menzel was involved in sabotaging the ship. However, the same officers as before refused to launch an investigation or pursue charges against Menzel. Instead, they threatened Dae and Hea if they didn't drop the matter. (Extirpon was later able to read Hea's mind, and took it on himself to punish those still at large involved in the refusal to pursue charges on Menzel. He also hunted down Menzel, terrorizing him to the point of death by heart attack.)

Devastated by Joo-Chin's death and the corruption in Boston's police department, Dae became bitter towards the world around her and with all its injustice. Hea's endless optimism and unflinching desire for adventure irritated and worried Dae, who took it out on Hea by being very strict with her and even occasionally downright mean to her. Hea was at this point old enough to know that this was not normal, and harbored some resentment for her mother for the sudden personality change. Even so, Hea felt there was not presently a better situation for her to live in than with her mother. So she learned to cope with Dae's mood swings and strict standards. Dae continued operating her museum, though her determination to keep sales up so she could keep it open and maintain her lifestyle became a blind spot to her. She started getting calls from a potential client in artifacts, calling itself "Cold Digit." She had little idea at the time that "Cold Digit" was a front for the Society of the Icy Finger.

Freedom's Apparition
Main article: The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition

After threats come in to kick Chik-Fil-A out of Massachusetts in 2012, Dae knows things have gotten truly bad in Boston. However, she is still reluctant to abandon her museum. That's when Dereck Johnson of Marl-Q Industries proposes that the mayor of Boston issue an executive order mandating that all schoolchildren from K-12 to have not yet received a vaccine for "Dwayne Strain" must do so. Dae quickly reads up on Dwayne Strain, and determines it to be a super virus cultivated from the remains of convicted serial rapist Dwayne Lloyd. All recipients of the vaccine did not gain immunity. Rather, they got the disease. Strong enough initial contact with the disease could lead to death within mere hours, and Hea's research beyond that revealed that Marl-Q had already weaponized it on a South American village as a test. Dae feared that as she and others went to the capital to protest the Dwayne Strain vaccine, they were at risk of being attacked with it.

John Domeck's sudden arrival in the 21st century also threw Dae for a loop. However, discovery of his Marlquaanite abilities gave her a sense of hope. With her museum's resources and Hea's guidance, John adapted to 21st century life long enough to assume the mantle of Hawthorne's Gray Champion for himself. The new Gray Champion was quickly put to the test, as LGBT militants began surrounding and harassing protestors of Dwayne Strain. Eric Andro of Boston PD further intensified matters, threatening to shoot some protestors dead while creating a perimeter around protestors so they couldn't leave. After Dereck accidentally transformed himself into the monster known as Eqquibus, he decides to use company helicopters to attack protestors with weaponized canisters of Dwayne Strain. He did not expect the Gray Champion to intervene and foil his plan. After the chaos of an ensuing Gray-Eqquibus battle that tears up parts of downtown, Dae attempts to lay low. However, Eqquibus eventually deduces that the Gray Champion had to come from Dae's museum. He attempts to capture Gray and the Pangs so that he can render the city defenseless. However, Hea gets away and flees to Kyle's house. Hea and Kyle later free Dae and Gray, but Kyle is murdered by Eqquibus in the process. Gray avenges Kyle and finally defeats Eqquibus. However, Hea is revealed some time later to have conceived Kyle's child. A distraught and angry Dae, feeling betrayed, kicks Hea out of the house. Hea moves into her own housing unit, supported by SCALLOP and the Medsors. To Dae's disappointment, John decides that he is in a better position leaving with Hea rather than staying with Dae. This leaves Dae feeling all alone in the world, only gradually coming to terms with it being partially her own fault for being so quick to push Hea away. However, John promises to leave the door open for reconciliation.

Chillingworth's Revenge
Main article: The Gray Champion: Chillingworth's Revenge

Dae's loneliness begins to cloud her judgment further in 2014, when she seeks a way to keep her museum open in spite increasingly low sales numbers. Cold Digit sends a certain Miles Charleston her way. Miles not only discusses a business deal with Dae, but begins flirting with her also. Dae, however, adamantly denies to Hea that she and Miles are dating. What Dae doesn't discover until too late is that Miles is also known as Chillingworth II, and is older than he seems. He is also an Icy Finger plant sent to spy on her and Hea, in the hopes of learning about John Domeck's whereabouts.

When Miles goes a little too far in demeaning Hea, Dae realizes everything Miles has been doing to poison the mother-daughter relationship. She snaps back at him in Hea's defense, only for Miles to betray her. He pins her to her own couch, then taunts her about how he is going to kill her and Hea both - and finally kill John also. He reveals that he is the new Chillingworth, then murders her with his freezing powers. He shatters her to pieces and leaves. Hea doesn't discover Dae again until she is little more than frozen chunks of meat - slowly thawing out on the living room floor.

Personality
Dae is very passionate about what she believes in and more than a little pushy. She makes for a strict parent and cares a lot about impressions. However, she sometimes lets her anger and bitterness cloud her judgment and prevent her from showing love when she should. She is able to keep this under control right until around the time that Joo-Chin drowns at sea. She knows almost immediately that Joo-Chin's old boss was responsible. The excuses given by Boston police of why they will not pursue murder charges on Joo-Chin's murderer nearly push Dae over the edge with depression, as she cannot fathom how the world came to be so unjust. She is very hard on Hea, and a little defensive about her being so even when she admits she has little justification for it.

Aside from her self-induced tragedy, Dae is very knowledgeable about American history and literature; and bestows a lot of her love for those things on Hea. She also is finely attuned to those aspects of it that are not usually covered in secular textbooks, or that tend to be whitewashed or morally inverted by some publishers. Her activism to avenge Joo-Chin's death is one of the few things she values more than operating her museum, the latter of which is her proud dream come true.

She is usually a good judge of character, though she does let her grudge against Hea for getting pregnant out of wedlock prevent her from paying attention when Hea warns her about Miles. It is this one error in judgment, and willingness to trust Miles too greatly, that leads to her downfall.

Continuity
In the fall of 2001, the Dozerfleet founder was assigned to write Nathaniel Hawthorne-themed fanfics as part of American Literature class with Traci Backus as the literature and history instructor at Holt Lutheran High School. As the class read The Scarlet Letter, everyone was expected to draw their own artists' interpretations of source material. While most remained faithful in their artwork to Hawthorne's descriptions, the Dozerfleet founder chose a "Disneyfied" look for depicting characters. Plain-looking Hester Prynne was replaced with a sultry, black-haired woman with a golden necklace that had a Marlquaanite ruby inside. Chillingworth was depicted as a supervillain with literal freezing power.

Around that same time, the teacher had the class read select short stories by Hawthorne in Twice-Told Tales. These included The Maypole of Merry Mount" and "The Gray Champion." The latter was so popular in class, that students got to do their own Gray Champion artwork and fanfics.  It was during these exercises that the Dozerfleet founder developed the now-iconic black mask with square yellow eyes that define the Dozerfleet character.  While most were content to write and draw for assignments and leave it at that, the Dozerfleet founder took it a step further.  This re-imagined Hawthorne literature became part of what would be dubbed "Hyper-Uber-Proto Gerosha" (Earth-G0.)

The reimagined Gray Champion soon found his way into the rough draft of a story now dubbed Modern Legend on this wiki. In it, John Domeck became the new Gray Champion after encountering a young girl named Heeshwa Pwong, whose mother ran a museum. The setting was originally in Grand Rapids, but later moved to Boston. "Mrs. Pwong" remained a background character throughout much of the early development process while other characters were better fleshed out. One thing that was made very clear, however, was that her husband died in a fishing boat-related accident that led to his having drowned. Therefore, she had to raise Heeshwa alone. Hyper-Uber-Proto Gerosha gave way to Uber-Proto Gerosha (Earth-G1) in late December of 2004, when the cast of 90 Has No Secant was re-created using The Sims Deluxe. Proto Gerosha (Earth-G2) came a short while later, when the Hood and Flippo clans were first defined. In May of 2005, Dozerfleet Labs acquired a copy of The Sims 2. Test Gerosha (Earth-G3.0) became the first attempt at creating the Hood and Flippo clans in that game, and Tobey Flippo was defined for the first time as Stan's adoptive father. In this time, Mrs. Pwong remained a background character in consideration for inclusion into what was becoming the Gerosha Universe.

Gerosha Prime (Earth-G3.1) arrived in late May of 2005, with the first successful attempt at The Battle for Gerosha. By March of 2006, it became clear that there were too many problems with Gerosha Prime for that continuity to continue. It was rendered defunct, in favor of an (eventually failed) reboot attempt later dubbed "Despair Gerosha" (Earth-G4.) Despair Gerosha laid a lot of groundwork for what would later become Classic Gerosha (Earth-G5) in January of 2007, particularly in regards to the mythos of Ciem. The Ciem webcomic of that year took two years to complete. In 2009, there were serious considerations to bring back Gray Champion mythos into the Gerosha fold. However, those projects were not pursued to their fullest due to a strong desire to quickly whip out Ciem 2. That project was then canceled due to a variety of issues. In 2010, Classic Gerosha was replaced with Comprehensive Gerosha (Earth-G6.) This new continuity sought to replace free-for-view Ciem webcomics with a Ciem novel trilogy. Other works originally scheduled for release as Classic Gerosha novels were later incorporated into Comprehensive Gerosha continuity.

It was in Comprehensive Gerosha that the first Gray Champion superhero novel was given its subtitle of Freedom's Apparition. A sequel was planned for it in 2011, dubbed Chillingworth's Revenge. Both projects were shelved. However, this was the first time that actual Korean names were looked into for possibilities for character names. Hints at what Mrs. Pwong's personality would be like were later defined more thoroughly. The "Pwongs" were renamed the "Pangs," as that was the closest-equivalent real-life common Korean surname. Heeshwa was renamed "Hea," the closest-equivalent real-life Korean first name. Mrs. Pang still needed a first name, so Dae was selected from a baby names online database.

Events during the 2012 elections convinced the Dozerfleet founder that Comprehensive Gerosha's continuity couldn't continue. So it was declared defunct on November 7th of 2012. However, very little was changed about the Comprehensive Gerosha continuity's depictions of events in Freedom's Apparition and Chillingworth's Revenge. It was seen that since these stories' events happen one before and the other so soon after the 2012 elections, little fallout from those elections would have any significant impact on the story's political climate feasibility. November 30th of 2012 saw Comprehensive Gerosha replaced with Cataclysmic Gerosha (Earth-G7,) the official continuity of Sodality. Ciem mythos was revised more than that of any other character. Dae's world as defined in Freedom's Apparition was directly transferred from one narrative universe to the other, implying that her life and times are canon to both.

Design, personality, and coverage
When Dae was first envisioned in 2001, she was little more than a background character. No effort at depicted what she looked like had ever been attempted. She was implied to be "somewhat like her daughter, but with a different personality." There were plans even in 2002 to develop her more, but those plans were put on hold as a surge of new ideas came forward. The Dozerfleet founder's beginning college produced additional delays. She didn't receive her proper name until late in 2010. Her first depiction in The Sims 3 didn't come about until late in 2011. By 2012, she had an article and image on DozerfleetWiki. However, the article was a placeholder until August of 2013. A better image for her was created in early 2013, placed both on the wiki and on DeviantArt. Efforts to integrate her into the Cataclysmic Gerosha timeline were undetaken in the summer of 2013, around the same time that the wiki fleshed out all articles pertaining to projects within The Gerosha Chronicles so that none of them remained as placeholders. Her backstory was given more detail, to make her activism and bitter personality more relatable and understandable. Her cranky attitude in Comprehensive Gerosha in general was toned down for Cataclysmic Gerosha, depicting her as more sympathetic than she was before. As Dae is a supporting character, she was never intended to be particularly complex. She was later discovered to be more complex than previously imagined.