Triana Orpheus

VBCharacter


character_name = Triana Orpheus
caption = Triana with her usual scowl.
debut_ep = Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!
voiced_by = Lisa Hammer
real_name = Triana Orpheus
char_alias = Pumpkin
profession = Student
characteristics = Goth/punk wardrobe, unknowingly commands the affections of Dean Venture
alliances = None yet (loosely allied with Team Venture)
prev_alliances =
relatives = Doctor Byron Orpheus (father)
Un-named Mother

Triana Orpheus is a supporting character on the Adult Swim television series "The Venture Bros.". She is the daughter of Doctor Byron Orpheus. She is voiced by Lisa Hammer.

Appearance and personality

Triana is approximately the same age as the Venture twins, Hank and Dean, which makes her seventeen years old. [ [http://www.adultswim.com/shows/venturebros/ Adult Swim Website Character Bio] ] She has adopted a distinctly goth appearance, including heavy makeup, a goth/punk/retro-styled wardrobe and dyed purple hair. It is possible her father's occupation as a necromancer was an influence in her goth tendencies, though there is no conclusive evidence to indicate this. Triana is a somewhat wild, rebellious youth and is implied to stay up all night partying and drinking (despite being underage) on a fairly frequent basis. It has been mentioned that she plays tennis.

All in all, though, Triana appears in most cases to be a fairly well-adjusted teenager, considering the unusual circumstances of her life. She typically puts on a fairly apathetic, cynical persona but has shown herself to be quite tolerant, kind-hearted and empathetic. She is generally much more mature than the Venture boys (she apparently already has her driver's license while neither of the Venture twins do) but never condescends to them or belittles their often childish or fantastical ideas. She was stated to be a virgin in "A Very Venture Christmas", but since it all ended up being a hallucination, it is not clear whether this is canon or not.

Family and friends

Triana appears to have a relatively peaceful, loving relationship with her father, putting up with his penchant for melodrama and habit of referring to her with cloying pet names such as "Pumpkin." It seems Dr. Orpheus is a somewhat oblivious and uninformed parent, however. He is either unaware of her partying or possibly in denial about it, as when he claims that he knew some of her friends drink alcohol but didn't think she did. He does comment sarcastically on Triana's having the same clothes on in the morning that she did the previous night as "frugal." Triana has displayed some degree of conflict about her father's occupation. She is horrified at the idea of Dr. Orpheus bringing the deceased Hank and Dean (before their revival in new clone bodies) back to life as zombies, though it is unclear whether her revulsion stems from the very idea of such an act, her feelings for the boys, or both.

What kind of relationship Triana has with her mother after her parents' divorce, if any, is unknown. According to Dr. Orpheus, Triana holds out hopes that her parents will reconcile.

Triana is frequently companions with the Venture twins and fond for the boys as friends (for example, bursting into tears at the idea of the temporarily-deceased Hank and Dean being resurrected as zombies by her father's necromantic arts as well as imploring her father not to humiliate them when he goes to retrieve them after they run away from home). She does not seem to reciprocate Dean's ardent romantic feelings towards her, but she commented to her friend Kim that she thought Dean was "kind of cute" and in the episode "The Buddy System," Triana admits to Dean himself that he's "pretty cute sometimes" in an uncharacteristically flirtatious moment. At the end of the same episode she is shown in a photo montage to be perhaps fawning over Dean who is flexing his bicep in the photo after he has pummeled a much larger teen-aged boy (in a fit of sobbing, mucus dripping rage) for being rude and insulting towards Triana.

Dr. Venture apparently holds a lower opinion of Triana than his sons do; he told Dean that she was a bad influence and "girls like that are usually on the dope." It should be noted, however, that Dr. Venture said this in a moment of stress as he was attempting to ascertain the nature of Dean's sudden illness (which turned out to be testicular torsion).

Triana has had little involvement with the other members of the "Venture clique" or their adversaries, but she appears to be fairly well-informed about the Venture family's somewhat unique lifestyle of high adventure and super-villain arch-enemies. Unlike Hank and Dean she attends school and has other friends outside the Venture Compound. These friends include Rachel, to whose house she ran away when younger, and Kim, who accompanied her on a double date with Hank and Dean.

History and activities on the show

Triana moved into the Venture Compound along with her father some time shortly before the events of the episode "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!" The two live in a remodeled section of the compound, previously unused since its days as an arachnid research wing. Her first meeting with Dean left him nearly dumb-struck with infatuation. When Dean, Hank and Brock became trapped inside Dr. Venture's "joy can" fantasy-fulfillment chamber invention, Triana inadvertently saved them as the sound of her voice aroused feelings of true love in Dean (which allowed him to open the gadget's door).

In "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean", Triana sympathetically asks Dean if this is the most humiliating moment of his life as he recovers from a bout of testicular torsion, to which he replied "easily."

Triana had a relatively minor role in "Tag Sale -- You're It!", spending time with Dean and proudly displaying the "grandma thunderpants" she planned to buy, and then briefly worked at Hank's grinder stand, "HankCo's Lemonade and Grinder World", before quitting in disgust.

In "Escape to the House of Mummies Part II," Triana discovered that her father had set up a mystical gateway to the Necropolis in the closet of her room. She angrily told him that she had been afraid of her closet for her entire life, which is why she wears the same clothes every day. As the Orpheus family has only lived in the Venture compound for a short time, this may indicate that Triana's closet or closets had been the Doctor's favored location for such things at their previous places of residence as well. (Though Jackson Publick points out on his LiveJournal that it is unclear exactly how long the Orpheuses have been living at the compound, teenagers are prone to hyperbole, and Dr. Orpheus performing some sort of magic manipulation to duplicate Triana's previous room in the new residence is also not out of the question.) Dr. Orpheus defended himself by saying that the gate had to be on the south side of the apartment and since Triana "had" to have her own bathroom, there was no other option. Pressed for time, he eventually gives up arguing and puts Triana into some sort of mystical sleep, erasing her memories of the incident in the process.

In "Victor. Echo. November.", Triana and her friend Kim went on a double date with Hank and Dean. Despite ending up at the same restaurant Phantom Limb and Doctor Girlfriend were on their own double date with The Monarch and a woman he had met on "The Livejournal", the girls' evening was relatively uneventful. Notably, however, an encounter with Dr. Girlfriend in the restroom led to Kim declare her interest in becoming a super-villain, which Hank had earlier guessed she already was, incorrectly at the time. Following the boys' trademark "Go Team Venture" pose, Kim declares (perhaps jokingly) that she has found her first arch-nemeses.

Left in the care of Dr. Venture while her father was busy screening villains for the position of his adventuring team's arch-nemesis in "Fallen Arches", Triana was treated to a production of "Lady Windermere's Fan" by Dean, Hank and Brock. Later, a villain known as Torrid kidnapped her, thus winning the coveted Order of the Triad "arching" gig, but she was unharmed, as Torrid merely transported her to an island in the Great Barrier Reef owned by her father.

In the second-season finale, "Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part II)", Triana appears to Dean as "Princess Tinglepants" during a stress-induced hallucination. During a panicked crowd scene in the Monarch's throne room in the same episode, "Princess Tinglepants" is briefly seen running for safety; Publick has been asked about this on his LiveJournal, and has admitted that this was, in fact, an animation mistake.

References