'trode

[luckies]

I: PLAYER INFO

Name: Lio

Age: Twenty-mnerghh.

Contact:

    [aim] nabokoventions
    [e@m] 61 and 49 [at] gmail

Current characters in Road of 'Trode:



II: CHARACTER INFO

Name: Spike Spiegel

Dreamwidth Username: luckies

Fandom: Cowboy Bebop

Image:

Age/Appearance: Spike is 27 in canon. From certain angles, he looks a little older; the lines on his face are definitely too defined for someone barely approaching thirty, and he has a haggard, seen-too-much-and-didn't-much-care-for-it kind of air about him.

Wiki Links: Check here. Honestly, there isn't much to go on. Born on Mars, and then canon is sparing with the details in between that and his Red Dragon romps.

Personality: I'm calm, and you're not.

Truer words were never spoken. Though 'calm' is interchangable with 'actually sleep-walking' in Spike's case (not just an apt metaphor), true zen is all Spike really is about. One gets the sense that he has seen far too much and has become numb to the plainer issues in life. Mention his rival or his elusive romantic interest, though, and that unshattering resolve falls all to pieces.

The motivator behind Spike's easy-going, laid-back personality is his entire philosophy on life. You see, long ago, Spike decided that he was living a dream. Not The Dream, of course; there is no room for rapture in the maudlin anime noir that is his life. Spike died in a very symbolic way, all his life shifting drastically in one very poignant instant, and so everything thereafter seemed to him like fantasy.

A heavy turning point like that will of course be hard to duplicate. In 'Trode, there is no Julia, no Vicious, and no rose petals slow-falling from an open window. All Spike will have is a bleary daydream of all that and the abrupt realization that he could be something more. Without anger, fear, and betrayal to shape him into the Spike we love and adore, he's just a rugrat conartist with sweet street savoir-faire.

All that will change after the dream. It would only make sense to adopt a bit of perspective from what he sees of his canon. As in the anime, he will "die" and be "reborn", which gives Spike freedom to flourish as the laziest antihero in all the world.

Once he has settled, dealing with the bizarre pangs of regret and disgust his vision has graced him with, Spike will become a bit more active. One of the key points of his personality is that he is brazen enough to act on any impulse -- most often accomplishing it as well, though not through any orthodox means. His sleepy eyes and easy smile belie a quick wit that can work over most hot-blooded homosapiens, and if that doesn't work, he can trust himself to make a quick and cunning escape. Spike is kind of all about himself; when Freud said that introverts were really just egomaniacs, someone just like him was probably draped across the couch. Because acting on impulses is his primary function, Spike rarely stops to consider the safety or emotional well-being of others. He is hard-wired to live in the moment, which serves him well when his past is all whiskey-soaked nightmares and scratchy jukebox dirges.

Spike is actually the simplest kind of character. Operating in the now, reserving all that strategy and hindsight for other more tedious creatures, he maintains himself as ludicrously unpredictable and startlingly repetitive. You might find him sleeping on a couch for five days straight, the same bottle of Jack set up close and slowly dwindling, or you might witness him taking on a bad-guy battalion with nothing but a broken broom and a cheesy one-liner.

Which is part of what makes it so difficult to get used to him. Whether you find his reckless charades charming or tedious, they are there to put a wall up. Add to that Spike's tendency to tease everyone, more so the people he likes, and there is no honest tell illustrating his intentions.

Get a story out of him, though, and you're one of the lucky ones. Spike swings between gruff and eloquent about as often as the sun sets and rises. He will belittle you to the end, but he has no patience when it comes to someone edging in on his personal space. Give him anything from a simple request to an ultimatum, too, and he will trample all over it.

But he'll be calmer than water before a storm and he'll probably make you laugh while he's doing it, so maybe he's not such a bad guy after all.

Reason for playing: FREEEDOOOOOOM, FREEDOM, FREEEDOOOM, FREEDOM. If that isn't enough: I really need a place to focus all that imagination that isn't spent knocking Barbies together in profound ways anymore. I think the duality aspect of this game is bonkers great and will prevent any same-old from happening ever. I want to see a lot of interesting. This game is definitely gonna have it.



III. AU INFO

Name: Don't go changin'.

Age/Appearance: To try'n please me.

History: Spike's a rough-n-tumble kid from the deep dark underbelly of Twin City. He was born, and that was about the most his parents did for him. From there, he steadily progressed toward a career in hoodlummin', hooking up with a bunch of local streetrats for protection and careful tutelage on the fine art of surviving the drag. Those kids ensured that he made it past squalling infancy, and picked up a few tricks of the trade to boot. During his formative years, his greatest aid was a Childhood Best Friend™ who picked up rough-housing a lot easier than he did. Thanks to him, Spike refined his get-away skills, and the pair were nigh on unbeatable.

When they were children, Nick and Spike had roughing it in common. Their parents were negligent at best, and a great source of fear at their worst. Spike was mostly ignored, so he'd taken to foraging for food around the city when he met Nick.

Nick taught him a few things about filling up his belly Lady and the Tramp style, along with a couple more streetwise tricks of the trade. They got into fights, ran from yelling store owners together, and had a great friendship, until the day that Nick decided to run away.

Spike waited for him -- and waited and waited, but he never showed to take Spike away with him. Spike was always very detached after that; he never could develop the same kind of relationship with anyone else he knew.

Years went by before they saw each other again. Living in the same city meant they were bound to run into each other sometime, but Spike's opinion is that too much time has passed and that it's better just to let it go. Nick always seems to find himself in a lot of trouble, and Spike's just now figuring out how to live his life in such a way that he never profoundly affects anything in the world around him.

Spike was always a man of reaction rather than proaction. All of his Ark life was based on finding a frontman and ducking out of the scene. His closest friends wouldn't have been able to tell you his family name or accurately describe his facial features, but they would be able to tell you that he could slip out of any altercation completely unscathed. Despite how unfair life was, and how deeply Spike suspected that he could do something to change it, he never saw an especially compelling reason to reach out of seclusion. This, of course, is something I would like to play with in-game; the jack will be the catalyst he needs to become the kind of guy he is in canon.

As time passed, Spike got better and better at the fleeting enigma gig. He would have held several jobs, all of them as anonymous as could be. (I'm thinking boxing archives, graveyard shift as a hospital janitor, that kind of stuff.) If possible, I'd really like for him to be currently employed in-game as a line-cook in a restaurant owned by a crime lord. Prepare for a pitch on this in another section!

Residence/Job: Spike doesn't live anywhere for very long. Some of this is his tendency to get while the gettin's good; sticking around one place causes things like a reputation, and pre-jack, Spike operated on out of sight, out of iron sights. Even afterwards, he'll still be kind of a drifter.

As for a job, lurking in the den of an infamous kingpin would suit his progression best. This would grant him access to information that will ultimately facilitate his evolution into the Spike Speigel from canon. I have this idea in my mind that, having seen these visions of what he might be capable of in his mindfuck-canon-jack, he will be more inclined to put the skills he was harboring to good use in order to bring a little justice to the streets. (And a little bread to his table.)

Skills/Powers: Life on the streets was kind to Spike's arsenal of survival skills. Through the years, he's developed a special style of fighting that is all sway and displacement. Spike can weasel his way out of any altercation, and throw a good kick to boot.

He also has a great eye, excellent for catching a sleight-of-hand or lining up that perfect shot. Nothing really gets past him, not when he spent his whole life trying to place the danger in every situation.

There isn't anything technically 'supernatural' about him. He'll tell stories about how he can see into the past and all that, but when it comes down to it, he's impulsive and bold and his true weakness is sticking with any kind of plan.

Resources: Pay-check to pay-check. Spike has maybe enough left over for the nice bottle of Cirrac, but that's about it. Cycling through jobs like he's throwing darts at a wheel and moving so often does not really leave one with a flourishing nest egg.



IV. SAMPLE

Arrival: Spike knew that he was a stranger in his own skin, because those were the only times he ever felt truly alone. Part of him wanted to be a big baby about it; all these images were just fermenting in his head and he had no one to sort them out with.

No use dwelling on the past. His mind cleared up just enough to offer him a quick fix -- yeah, there was some convenience store quality liquor hidden in his cabinet, a real 'break glass in case of emergency' kind of stash. Spike remembered how to work a bottle cap too, and that was something he had going for him.

Now if only he could fit together the rest.

This was just like any existential crisis he'd faced throughout the years. Just a nightmare, nothing to really concern a guy until he realized--

Shame.

Shame was what he felt. He'd dreamt he was a pilot, free as a bird, just like in the songs. A class act, a 'real go-getter' his daddy might have said, if Old Man Spiegel was inclined to say anything these days. Shame was what he got back every time he tried to place himself in this reality. What was he doing before this? Getting the girl, saving the world -- no.

One careless, grumpy glance toward the smoking oven revealed the truth. Nuking left-overs from the restaurant.

Spike threw open the oven doors, grabbed the pot, hissed, thought better, wrapped his hand in a towel and then grabbed the pot, and threw open the single window in the room. Wilted onions and some kind of questionable protein tumbled into the streets, but Spike's eye was on the sky. For the first time ever, he wondered how far away the heavens were, and he realized, with a gnawing sensation of torture in the pit of his stomach, that they weren't far enough.