Paula Trainor

Paula Trainor is the best friend of Amy Barksdale in Brother Grimace's "A Path of Roses and Thorns." She is the Dean of tha Curtis E. LeMay College of Military Sciences at Tennyson University, and a Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force. She possesses several degrees, including Master's and doctoral degrees in Political Science, and a Master's in biology (with a specialization in genetic abnormalities).

Paula is an African-American woman of thirty-nine, very attractive and slightly vain about her appearance (she once bragged about having the same clothing size since her time in college), and not at all reluctant to speak her mind. Paula is also a lesbian, and while she is not openly gay (because she wishes to remain in the military), she does have a semi-public relationship with Sammi Rudolph. She does not let her sexuality act as the primary focus of her life (she once jokingly remarked that she has saved that position for her quest to get Amy married). She is a native Rhode Islander and presumably quite wealthy (according to the car she owns - a custom-made BMW roadster - and the eclectic mix of A-list persons that she knows; it has been revealed that she has a personal relationship with members of Great Britain's Royal Family). She also has a slight dislike of Southerners (or perhaps just of Daniel St. John).

(It is never stated exactly what Paula's duties in uniform entail, but it is known that she was the commander of a nuclear missile site at one time, and served at some time during the Reagan Administration (between August 1981 and June 1984) as the officer who "carried the Football." She also apparently has enough authority to allow her to intimidate Federal officers, and be immediately appraised of emergency situations throughout the government.) It has been recently revealed that Paula's last posting, before she was assigned to Tennyson University, was as the Director of Project Fast Forward (located at Niagara Falls, New York). She has the Secret Service code-name of 'Godseye', for reasons also not revealed.

Paula was to be Amy's Maid of Honor at her wedding to Maurice 'Reese' Wyatt, but was called away to the White House on important business and returned for the reception. (Not wanting to take away from Amy's special day, Paula didn't tell her that she had been promoted to Brigadier General and selected to become the Deputy Director of DELPHI, replacing Robert Bakeson.) She has recently been selected for a high-level position in the United States Department of Extranormal Affairs, for which she would have had to resign her post at Tennyson, but still remain in the Washington, D.C. area. She has instead elected to take the Dean's position at Tennyson, but still possesses an enormous amount of political and personal power (as the position she would have assumed is being held open for her).

In some alternate realities, Paula also possesses metahuman powers, but as of this point, those powers have not been revealed.

In the Apocalyptic Daria universe, Paula was responsible for saving the lives of Amy, her family, and several of their close friends by deploying a DELPHI Gridrunner Mark II aircraft to Tennyson University and extracting them before Washington, D.C. was destroyed by a nuclear weapon.