Post by TETRIS on Jun 24, 2010 10:21:02 GMT -5
GLADSTONE
DEMOGRAPHIC
Name:Gideon Gladstone
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Shift: Barbary lion
Nationality: Dutch
Sexuality: Euclidean-line straight
Religion: Agnostic
Politics: Right-wing (to the MAX)
Occupation: Gladstone Co. heir; Verge Apts. manager; ex-gladiator;
Residence: Verge Apartments
AESTHETIC
Appearance: Gladstone is all long rectangles and sharp planes put together. He has a lean, long, wiry build, sinewy and thin. All the vigour has faded from him. His hair is a pale strawberry-blonde like sun-bleached straw. It is worn fairly untidy, with shaggy bangs that spill across his pronounced brow. The sharp jutting line of his cheekbones leads nicely to his deep-set, intense eyes, their depths a clear, pale, electric-blue that borders on artificial. His gaze is oddly vibrant and lively, a contrast against his otherwise decrepit appearance. Short stubble across his jaw provides a five o'clock shadow. He appears tired, with a reedy, faintly breathless drawling voice to accentuate that.
Attire: Even if he is an ex-gladiator, he can never truly leave the arena. He maintains comfort and simplicity in his attire, by wearing a black vest with the front ripped open, which disappears into a leather belt and black slacks above steel-capped boots. His only accessories are a cream silk kerchief knotted casually about his neck, and several twine bracelets accumulated on his wrists, trophies of bygone glory.
Headshot:
PSYCHOLOGICAL
Personality: Gladstone acts like an old, weary lion, despite being in his prime. Churlish from fatigue and tending towards impatience, he harbours a slow-mounting ire that sleeps placidly most of the time. He is bitter, irascible, paranoid, and aloof with majestic disdain, maintaining a frosty Olympian contempt and regal acerbity towards socio-political maneuverings. His world is dominated by the right of might, natural selection, and survival of the strongest. He has no time and no use for coy little power plays.
Not to say that he is naive, because he can be just as manipulative in his own way. He abides by a tooth-for-tooth, eye-for-eye code of law, using physical threats and an intimate understanding of pain to achieve his goals. Gladstone is an egocentrist and a jerk, armed with a panache of haughty malevolence and selfishness immune to feelings of guilt. All human-created laws are rife with hypocrisy so he does pretty much what he pleases with a very clear idea of the severity of retribution he can expect, but without any consideration for the emotional repercussions or moral implications of his actions.
Very intelligent, he has accumulated a cultured vocabulary and social etiquette. Gladstone likes to employ the modest shock value of spicing his sentences with profanity, his actions with just enough unexpected brutality to make people think twice about him. If only to expose the pretentiousness of "behavioural norms" that he in no way feels obligated to honour, though he concedes to acknowledge their existence. To him, everything is a banal display of moronic ineptitude, clever constructs created by the weak. And while he recognizes the brilliance of the system, he does not subscribe to it.
It is difficult to fathom the processes behind Gladstone's indolent expression and snide remarks. He does not like many people and trusts even fewer. A life of violence has not made him bloodthirsty; worse, it has made him dangerous. Smoothly unruffled and lazily sleek, all that he says and does comes across calculated. Even his displays of ill temper are gauged and deliberate. Gladstone is perpetually cold, level, and precise - it does not help humanize him.
Likes: the smell of blood, iron, sweat, dirt, Torque
Dislikes: humans, animals, most everything else
Hobbies: running/jogging/sports
SOCIETAL
HISTORY
Parental/Early: Born in poverty and bred away from the light of "justice," he was raised as a slave (or at least domestic servant), to be sold to the highest bidder one day. When he stumbled onto the slave-fighting rings, it seemed that he had found his niche. Competent, but insignificant enough to be wagered against heavy odds, he was a fairly reliable source of income for his owners. Notably, he never much complained about being property, though he also never seemed to place much stock in the words "owner" and "slave," always doing what he pleased and willingly accepting punishments when he crossed the line.
Childhood: It was that apathetic, self-assured spirit that caught Mr. Gladstone’s eye. As the top executive of Gladstone Corporations, the man himself possessed brimming self-confidence, cut-throat ruthlessness, and a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. The cage fighter was a trifling investment for him, a fascinating specimen of shape-shifting, and he became boy’s sponsor. He, who had always been called "boy" or "pup," now had a name: Gladstone.
Adolescence: At sixteen, Gladstone had established himself as a wildcard. He did not consistently come out a flamboyant champion in the rings, but he had a remarkable record of never losing any of his fights. When Gladstone Sr. paid his ward the yearly visit, he whimsically decided to introduce the boy to his friends. Thus, Gladstone was suited up, given a week to learn the basics of good etiquette, and appointed to appear at a social gathering on Christmas Day.
Gladstone was not spectacularly charming. He was not flattering, not playful, but he had an intense animal vitality that made many of the guests look twice. He was a hit. Gladstone Sr. had no child of his own, just an invalid wife. Paternal urges unfulfilled, he slowly began to adopt Gladstone as a godson figure of sorts. He spent little time with the boy but arranged for the best education and formal instructions in combat to be available to Gladstone. Caught between the paradoxically different worlds, heated by the fires of the ring and forged by haute culture, he was allowed to form on his own.
Adulthood: Six years later, Gladstone had mastered the bipolar lifestyle. On the anniversary of his sponsorship, he was scheduled for a championship tournament match. The frenzy of the crowd, one of the biggest congregations ever assembled to watch the illegal slave-fights, distracted Gladstone and he made his first mistake. He left the ring with the victory, and a permanent handicap, an injury in his dominant arm which barred him from the rings for good.
Current: His career and life quickly became a piled-up wreckage of personal crises. Gladstone had no interest in inheriting the Corporation business. Beyond the fiscal support, a desk job seemed to promise a life of ennui. Gladstone sought solace in sex, drugs, looking for that elusive adrenaline rush. Frustrated that he had traded excitement for a stupid show of civilized living, he began to take out his boredom on the notables, channeling his mental and physical energies into elaborate plots to ruin their lives. The motive wasn’t revenge. It was the same rational that led him to play along in the first place: because he could.
RELATIONSHIPS
Family:
* Jonathon Gladstone (surrogate father) - founder and current CEO of the Gladstone Corporations. Gladstone Sr. adopted Gladstone, appointing him heir to the corporation. He has tried to bless Gladstone with the baptismal name "Gideon" but Gladstone is less than thrilled.
Acquaintances:
* Torque (friend) - an ex-prostitute, ex-specimen, and current homeless bum. She's fairly exotic-looking, being a Blue Malaysian Coral Snake shifter... although she no longer shifts with any frequency, since it's excruciatingly painful for her. She's the classic waif-whore, the skinny and voluptuous all at the same time, made possible only by the contrast of knobbly ribs with her hips and breasts. Like him, she is inhumanly distant. Her skin is artificially pale, poreless, taut, and bruised. Her hair is shiny cyan, coarse, greasy, and sculpted into an impossible bubble. Beneath her bowl-cut bangs, she has dark eyes drowned in garish pools of caked eyeliner and the faintest hint of blue glitter eyeshadow. Her lips are painted blue, and cold sores mark the corners of her mouth.
OTHER
Trivia: If you're talking about experienced shapeshifting, your man is Gladstone. He doesn't have a last name. He's lived a cut-throat existence his whole life, and his mentality is as far closer to the feral savageries of the slave-fighting pit than any semi-human understandings could tell you. To survive - just to wake up in the morning each day, and have a bed to go to at the end of the night, after slaughtering countless of his "kin", so to speak, Gladstone is a fantastic shapeshifter. He can shift his clothing with him, giving his coarse lion's fur a teflon-mesh sort of blend. The black vest becomes his mane; his neckerchief, the single streak of creamy fur that distinguishes him. His pants are usually forfeit, however; he lacks the time nor patience to blend that in. After all, a slip in concentration led to him tearing his vest one time. BE WARNED. He has no qualms about killing his kind, no matter how 'pathetic' or 'cannibalistic' it may seem. He's not a causeless killer. He's seen too much death to kill whimsically. But don't piss him off.
In medias res: Gladstone meets Torque for the first time, while she's still working as a Corporation call-girl.
DEMOGRAPHIC
Name:
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Shift: Barbary lion
Nationality: Dutch
Sexuality: Euclidean-line straight
Religion: Agnostic
Politics: Right-wing (to the MAX)
Occupation: Gladstone Co. heir; Verge Apts. manager; ex-gladiator;
Residence: Verge Apartments
AESTHETIC
Appearance: Gladstone is all long rectangles and sharp planes put together. He has a lean, long, wiry build, sinewy and thin. All the vigour has faded from him. His hair is a pale strawberry-blonde like sun-bleached straw. It is worn fairly untidy, with shaggy bangs that spill across his pronounced brow. The sharp jutting line of his cheekbones leads nicely to his deep-set, intense eyes, their depths a clear, pale, electric-blue that borders on artificial. His gaze is oddly vibrant and lively, a contrast against his otherwise decrepit appearance. Short stubble across his jaw provides a five o'clock shadow. He appears tired, with a reedy, faintly breathless drawling voice to accentuate that.
Attire: Even if he is an ex-gladiator, he can never truly leave the arena. He maintains comfort and simplicity in his attire, by wearing a black vest with the front ripped open, which disappears into a leather belt and black slacks above steel-capped boots. His only accessories are a cream silk kerchief knotted casually about his neck, and several twine bracelets accumulated on his wrists, trophies of bygone glory.
Headshot:
PSYCHOLOGICAL
Personality: Gladstone acts like an old, weary lion, despite being in his prime. Churlish from fatigue and tending towards impatience, he harbours a slow-mounting ire that sleeps placidly most of the time. He is bitter, irascible, paranoid, and aloof with majestic disdain, maintaining a frosty Olympian contempt and regal acerbity towards socio-political maneuverings. His world is dominated by the right of might, natural selection, and survival of the strongest. He has no time and no use for coy little power plays.
Not to say that he is naive, because he can be just as manipulative in his own way. He abides by a tooth-for-tooth, eye-for-eye code of law, using physical threats and an intimate understanding of pain to achieve his goals. Gladstone is an egocentrist and a jerk, armed with a panache of haughty malevolence and selfishness immune to feelings of guilt. All human-created laws are rife with hypocrisy so he does pretty much what he pleases with a very clear idea of the severity of retribution he can expect, but without any consideration for the emotional repercussions or moral implications of his actions.
Very intelligent, he has accumulated a cultured vocabulary and social etiquette. Gladstone likes to employ the modest shock value of spicing his sentences with profanity, his actions with just enough unexpected brutality to make people think twice about him. If only to expose the pretentiousness of "behavioural norms" that he in no way feels obligated to honour, though he concedes to acknowledge their existence. To him, everything is a banal display of moronic ineptitude, clever constructs created by the weak. And while he recognizes the brilliance of the system, he does not subscribe to it.
It is difficult to fathom the processes behind Gladstone's indolent expression and snide remarks. He does not like many people and trusts even fewer. A life of violence has not made him bloodthirsty; worse, it has made him dangerous. Smoothly unruffled and lazily sleek, all that he says and does comes across calculated. Even his displays of ill temper are gauged and deliberate. Gladstone is perpetually cold, level, and precise - it does not help humanize him.
Likes: the smell of blood, iron, sweat, dirt, Torque
Dislikes: humans, animals, most everything else
Hobbies: running/jogging/sports
SOCIETAL
HISTORY
Parental/Early: Born in poverty and bred away from the light of "justice," he was raised as a slave (or at least domestic servant), to be sold to the highest bidder one day. When he stumbled onto the slave-fighting rings, it seemed that he had found his niche. Competent, but insignificant enough to be wagered against heavy odds, he was a fairly reliable source of income for his owners. Notably, he never much complained about being property, though he also never seemed to place much stock in the words "owner" and "slave," always doing what he pleased and willingly accepting punishments when he crossed the line.
Childhood: It was that apathetic, self-assured spirit that caught Mr. Gladstone’s eye. As the top executive of Gladstone Corporations, the man himself possessed brimming self-confidence, cut-throat ruthlessness, and a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. The cage fighter was a trifling investment for him, a fascinating specimen of shape-shifting, and he became boy’s sponsor. He, who had always been called "boy" or "pup," now had a name: Gladstone.
Adolescence: At sixteen, Gladstone had established himself as a wildcard. He did not consistently come out a flamboyant champion in the rings, but he had a remarkable record of never losing any of his fights. When Gladstone Sr. paid his ward the yearly visit, he whimsically decided to introduce the boy to his friends. Thus, Gladstone was suited up, given a week to learn the basics of good etiquette, and appointed to appear at a social gathering on Christmas Day.
Gladstone was not spectacularly charming. He was not flattering, not playful, but he had an intense animal vitality that made many of the guests look twice. He was a hit. Gladstone Sr. had no child of his own, just an invalid wife. Paternal urges unfulfilled, he slowly began to adopt Gladstone as a godson figure of sorts. He spent little time with the boy but arranged for the best education and formal instructions in combat to be available to Gladstone. Caught between the paradoxically different worlds, heated by the fires of the ring and forged by haute culture, he was allowed to form on his own.
Adulthood: Six years later, Gladstone had mastered the bipolar lifestyle. On the anniversary of his sponsorship, he was scheduled for a championship tournament match. The frenzy of the crowd, one of the biggest congregations ever assembled to watch the illegal slave-fights, distracted Gladstone and he made his first mistake. He left the ring with the victory, and a permanent handicap, an injury in his dominant arm which barred him from the rings for good.
Current: His career and life quickly became a piled-up wreckage of personal crises. Gladstone had no interest in inheriting the Corporation business. Beyond the fiscal support, a desk job seemed to promise a life of ennui. Gladstone sought solace in sex, drugs, looking for that elusive adrenaline rush. Frustrated that he had traded excitement for a stupid show of civilized living, he began to take out his boredom on the notables, channeling his mental and physical energies into elaborate plots to ruin their lives. The motive wasn’t revenge. It was the same rational that led him to play along in the first place: because he could.
RELATIONSHIPS
Family:
* Jonathon Gladstone (surrogate father) - founder and current CEO of the Gladstone Corporations. Gladstone Sr. adopted Gladstone, appointing him heir to the corporation. He has tried to bless Gladstone with the baptismal name "Gideon" but Gladstone is less than thrilled.
Acquaintances:
* Torque (friend) - an ex-prostitute, ex-specimen, and current homeless bum. She's fairly exotic-looking, being a Blue Malaysian Coral Snake shifter... although she no longer shifts with any frequency, since it's excruciatingly painful for her. She's the classic waif-whore, the skinny and voluptuous all at the same time, made possible only by the contrast of knobbly ribs with her hips and breasts. Like him, she is inhumanly distant. Her skin is artificially pale, poreless, taut, and bruised. Her hair is shiny cyan, coarse, greasy, and sculpted into an impossible bubble. Beneath her bowl-cut bangs, she has dark eyes drowned in garish pools of caked eyeliner and the faintest hint of blue glitter eyeshadow. Her lips are painted blue, and cold sores mark the corners of her mouth.
OTHER
Trivia: If you're talking about experienced shapeshifting, your man is Gladstone. He doesn't have a last name. He's lived a cut-throat existence his whole life, and his mentality is as far closer to the feral savageries of the slave-fighting pit than any semi-human understandings could tell you. To survive - just to wake up in the morning each day, and have a bed to go to at the end of the night, after slaughtering countless of his "kin", so to speak, Gladstone is a fantastic shapeshifter. He can shift his clothing with him, giving his coarse lion's fur a teflon-mesh sort of blend. The black vest becomes his mane; his neckerchief, the single streak of creamy fur that distinguishes him. His pants are usually forfeit, however; he lacks the time nor patience to blend that in. After all, a slip in concentration led to him tearing his vest one time. BE WARNED. He has no qualms about killing his kind, no matter how 'pathetic' or 'cannibalistic' it may seem. He's not a causeless killer. He's seen too much death to kill whimsically. But don't piss him off.
In medias res: Gladstone meets Torque for the first time, while she's still working as a Corporation call-girl.
Hollow cheeks, tufts of matted strawberry-blonde hair, and torn black mesh vest, were rather ubiquitous among the homeless denizens of the Core. From the back, the man had an impressive build; all rectangles - long, hard planes and lines, with a slow but persistent tread marred by a gamey leg he was dragging slightly as he moved. A cream silk kerchief around his neck had taken on the vague light colour of his hair. Both were mottled dark by the drizzle, with what space between raindrops filled by pervasive soot.
From the front, his features should and could have been set in stone. They were unforgivingly hard, brows, cheekbones, and nose the primary ridges. His shadowed eyes were ambivalent but very much alive, a pale electric-blue opaquely blank. And in that opacity, horror.
He looked, for all the world, like a tired, large jungle cat, captured and tolerating the antics its tamers put it up to, irascible but hardly even bothering to show the irritation, veiling a dangerous alacrity between a limp. His tamer led him with her hips, sufficiently bared by a ruched short skirt. Tattered garters flashed patches of exposed skin; her skin was palely elastic and taut, as artificial as the absurd and impossible sculpted bubble of cyan hair she wore. Tripping easily through the crowd, her eyes hidden by curved bangs, she danced a rhythm that only he could hear and follow.
At the edge of a curb, she stopped, hesitated, looked back for the first time. A sleek dark gray car waited there, engine idling. In the headlights, the rain and soot became all the more obvious, suspended particles clogging the atmosphere.
"Here we are," she said, hanging back as if reluctant to leave the safety of the streets. "After you, Mr. Gladstone."
"Gladstone will do," came her companion's reply. He stepped to the car door with the same unruffled assurance, then looked down briefly at the small girl. For a moment, his mouth twitched in the hint of a mirthless smile, then he clapped a hand to her neck where her loose shirt had slipped off the bony shoulder.
"Torque," she said. Her lips, blue and cracked, trembled, with cold sores near the corners. The door closed with a click.