Name: Jeanine Thompson
Age: 35
Occupation: For money? Corporate Whore

Jeanine first appeared as my nom de plume when writing "personalized fetish erotica" in the late Nineties and has served as my alter ego ever since. In truth, Jeanine and I (just as like the other characters and their real-life counterparts) are very much the same person. Her come backs are a little snappier, a little bolder, and come a little quicker, but for the most part she's me.



Name: John
Age: 40
Occupation: Music god and IBM Tape Monkey

John is my primary partner and a thousand times more punny than I could ever manage to portray here. I firmly believe it would take audio, at the very least, to capture his particular level of corn ball. We've been together four years now - which is three years and six months longer than we made it the first two times we dated. Perhaps that's a story I'll tell in mini-comic form some day... regardless, he is first and foremost my home.



Names: Maree and Michael
Ages: 11 and 9
Occupations: Being children, their main occupation seems to be challenging life.

BetaPwned is primarily a comic about the adults in my life so the kids don't show up very often. It's certainly not for lack of content, my kids can be funny little monkeys, but I've no real need to add to the general difficulty of growing up by broadcasting the more amusing bits of their lives to thousands of people on the internet. Sure, I might bring up some of the more common themes like puberty - but that thing with the bath toy and the butter? Yeah... that'll stay private.



Name: Rob
Age: Currently celebrating the 8th anniversary of his 23rd birthday.
Occupation: I don't care what he does for money - he's a writer as far as I'm concerned.

Rob quite flatly portrays my best friend. In reality he's brilliantly witty and cleverly poignant. Once again I'm forced to admit that my skills simply aren't up to the task of capturing reality. Oh... lest I forget - should he ever feel the need to make my life complete, all he'd have to do is finish one of those novels. *hint hint*



Name: Amy
Age: 32
Occupation: Secretary

Amy doesn't actually represent a single person. She's really nothing more than a receptical for all the annoyance and frustration I feel toward the various individuals I come in contact with on a daily basis. It was pretty early on in the comic when I realized that I wanted to write about certain people and situations that upset me, but I felt bad about calling people out in a public forum where they couldn't defend themselves. With Amy they at least get a measure of deniability.



Name: James
Age: 34
Occupation: Personal Trainer

Like Amy, James is a construct forged of my imagination and a seemingly random mixture of people I've either known or have come into contact with casually. Unfortunately, his situation (a gay man marrying a woman simply to remain closeted and please his parents) is all too real... and really fucking awful. Seriously, if you recognize yourself or your situation in James, contact your local GLBT support group and get some damn help.



Name: Doesn't matter
Age: Timelessly annoying
Occupation: Pissing me off

It all started with "Blinded by the Light". How one song can be so brutalized by so many baffles me. Call it a pet peeve if you must, but I call the blind butchery of song lyrics cause for violence. There may be a lyric zombie game at some point... if I can manage to hold my temper long enough to gather enough commonly butchered lyrics and figure out a simple and amusing mode of play.