Post by Alfred F. Jones on Jul 4, 2016 2:58:06 GMT
A War for the Heart of Our System has Begun
Character: America
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Occupation: College Student
Home Planet: Earth (Currently living on Venus)
Sexuality: Homosexual af
Relationship Status: Single
Appearance
Standing at 5'11", Alfred is taller than the average, but not by much. He's well-built, but slender with a runner's physique. Fitting, since he ran track in middle and high school, and spent a lot of time running from various authorities in his youth. His skin is a sun-kissed tan, which stands out among the sometimes sun-starved inhabitants of Venus. As the school year wears on, he usually loses his golden tone, but after a summer on Earth he'll usually gain it back. He has various scars on his hands and upper arms from working with electricity and sometimes sharp metal parts as part of his work in robotics, as well as scrapes and scars all over his lower legs from roaming the tangled forests outside of his home on Earth in shorts.
Big, bright, iridescent blue eyes shine out of his face, displaying every emotion. No matter how hard he tries to hide anything, his eyes are like an open book, expressive and open. They're slightly obscured behind prescription lenses, but the glasses do little to conceal his expressions. Golden blonde hair is often mussed, a careless hand run through it one too many times, with one flyaway lock of hair that refuses to stay down no matter what he does to it. But the "just got out of bed" look works for him, so he doesn't complain. He prefers to dress casually, loves asymmetric zippers, and wears jeggings ironically because its retro.
Personality
Alfred is a sweet kid, honest! He's just a little rambunctious, over-the-top, loud, reckless, pig-headed, and maybe a bit obnoxious. But I swear he's sweet! Sure, he can go a little overboard, but that's just his vivacious, exuberant personality. He likes being the center of attention, and it comes naturally to him. His presence can take up an entire room, and his good moods are contagious, as is his laughter. He's gregarious and charming, easily making jokes and carrying on conversations even with the shyest of people. He makes friends easily and has few people he considers enemies, though some of the people he terms 'acquaintances' might disagree with that. He holds little animosity for others, and would vastly prefer to get along with the majority of people.
That being said, don't make him angry. Not low-level angry with outbursts of temper and a dramatic storm off. No, those he'll get over quick, and he'll have forgotten why he was mad in the first place by the time you speak to him again. No, I mean really angry. The kind of angry where you know you done fucked up. He'll go quiet, his usually open and expressive eyes going hard, his look sharp. His mouth will draw into a thin line and, seemingly calm, he'll leave wordlessly. This is when you need to move to a different planet. Maybe go hide out in The Belt and hope he doesn't find you.
If you're a friend, you'll get off lightly with a prank or two. If he already doesn't like you, prepare for hell. The Prank War he will rain down upon you will be akin to the Plagues of Egypt. You'll sometimes wonder if he plans to kill you, but nothing ever gets malicious enough that you're in real danger. And he is relentless in his pursuit. Word around campus is that one time, he got a hold of some dirt on a guy (or maybe fabricated it) who had cheated on him and got him banned for life from the University. No one knows what it was, but there was talk of criminal charges. He won't admit it to anyone, but its true. He got that bastard back, good. And only a tiny fraction of what he got on him was forged.
But other than that, he's a real sweetheart. He'll go out of his way for friends and even strangers, and he doesn't hesitate when someone needs something he can provide. Hell, he'll offer even if he knows his help isn't needed (or even wanted). He's a caring, generous, heartfelt young man who you just don't want to piss off.
Seriously.
Don't do it.
Likes
~ His brother, Matt, who is the best ever in the world
~ Real food, especially hamburgers
~ Taller men
~ Robotics
~ Software design
~ Cyberactivism (He hacks GMC systems and leaves them nasty little presents)
~ The Venusian Night Life (especially the gay clubs in Eros)
~ Roaming The Wastes on Earth
~ Ice cream, both real and synthesized (synthesized vanilla is better than real vanilla, in his opinion)
~ Volunteering with kids
~ Just kids in general, really
Dislikes
~ Slavery
~ The GMC
~ Ghosts
~ Synthetic pork (it tastes burnt no matter how you cook it)
~ Cold weather (only a problem in The Wastes)
~ Synthetic vegetables (they always come out weirdly rubbery)
~ The violin (he was forced to learn. He's great, but hates it)
Backstory
Alfred was born on Earth, the youngest of twins, to a lawyer and a doctor in the Northwest Metropolitan Dome encompassing parts of what had been New York and the surrounding area. He grew up in their personal residential dome along with his brother Matthew. It wasn't very big, but it was a respectably-sized suburban bubble. They had a real grass lawn and a dog named Sam, and Alfred was being groomed to take over his father's law firm when he got older. All in all, it was a life to be envious of for many. But Alfred hated it. The private dome was boring, he didn't have any interest in law, and his parents' friends' boring kids were obnoxious and haughty. He didn't want anything to do with them. He refused to play with anyone but Matthew, considering the other kids stuck up and stupid.
He was 12 the first time he snuck out of the dome. On a day when he was off of school and his parents were both at work, he decided that it was high time he left the domes and did something risky. He knew he couldn't tell Mattie, who would eat up all of his time trying to convince him not to go, but it killed him knowing he would have to keep a secret from his twin. He took nothing with him but a flashlight, a GPS, and a satchel with trail mix and a few water bottles as he picked the lock on the basement door and hacked the terminal that controlled the "garage door", the tunnel through which they drove their car in and out. He took off into the forest, knowing he had time before his busy parents came home from work and caught him out. Mattie would probably notice he was gone, but by then it would be too late to make him stay, and Al knew Matt would never snitch him out.
All his life he had been told how terrible it was out in the Wastes, how dangerous and unclean. But what he found out there was sheer beauty. Nature had begun to run its course and started to take back what humanity had corrupted. Within a 5 minute walk from his dome, he found an abandoned house so covered in vines and plant growth that he couldn't even get to the front door. And that wasn't the last remnant of their former society he saw being taken back by nature. A playground overgrown with flowers as big as his head, with stalks almost as tall as he was. He learned later that they were sunflowers. It quickly became one of his favorite places to visit, hanging out on the rusted out swings as the tall flowers blocked out everything but the sky.
He spent most of his days like that for the rest of the summer, playing out in the forest and learning how to do simple things like swim (where the water flowed fast and clean enough) and climb trees. He started collecting things he found out there. Rocks and flowers at first, then remnants of his ancestor's world. Old baseball cards, half-rotted novels, assorted odds and ends. Then came the technology. He had no idea why it called out to him, but he just started collecting it. And collecting turned into tinkering, tinkering turned into repairing, repairing turned into building. He'd always had an interest in technology, but until then his interests had always lay more in coding than in construction. But the older tech called to him, and he had to play with it. Especially the pre-modern robotics.
He started building a robot of his own in his room from the scrap he found out in the Wastes. It was a silly, simple thing small enough to fit in his sock drawer that did nothing more than eat his spare change and make cute beeping noises. But he loved the useless little thing, naming it Tony and spending a portion of his allowance every week to keep it going.
If his parents knew anything was different about their son, they didn't say anything. If they noticed all of the time he spent in his room and the cuts and burns on his hands, they didn't let on. His mother still asked about his homework, his father still went on about Alfred joining the law firm. But he had other plans now. He wanted to go into the tech industry. He wanted to work with these devices on a permanent basis, not just as a secret hobby in his bedroom.
So he started floating the possibility of him not going into law to his parents. They were shocked, to say the least, and his father appeared perturbed. Hadn't that always been what Alfred wanted? He hadn't said anything before. But when Alfred finally came out and told them that he wanted to become and expert in robotics, they relented without much pressure. They would send him to the University of Venus for a degree in Robotic Engineering, giving up their plans to see him go to law school on Mars.
And so, when he graduated, ALfred headed off to Venus to get his degree. It was his first time off-planet for more than a few weeks of vacation (as well as his first time living on his own) and he was excited, but also a little bit wary. He didn't know anything about the people of Venus or what to expect. But, being a gregarious and charming young man, he quickly began to make friends. Friends who insisted that he come with them to Eros on the weekends to hit the clubs and find cute people to chat up. Or, Alfred chats them up. His friends mostly hook up with them.
RP Sample
Alfred sighed over the pounding beat of the techno music that had the club rocking. Normally, he was all for it. He'd let the music take over him and one of his friends or some cute guy pull him out onto the dance floor. But it was the Friday night after his last final of the semester and he was just exhausted. The pounding music was giving him a headache, he felt too drained to walk, let alone dance, and he just wanted to go back to Vulcan City and crawl into his bed and sleep for a week.
He had no idea why he'd let himself be talked into this, but it was quickly becoming the worst idea he'd had all week, and on Thursday he'd poured an energy drink into his coffee. His neck and back ached from being hunched over his computer screen writing essays, and he had a huge gash on his arm where he'd sliced it open on a particularly sharp piece of his final project for his Advanced Robotics class. All in all, it had been a shitty week and he wished his friends had picked a quiet bar where they could get shitfaced and go home instead of the loud, packed club they'd ended up at. And he usually loved the Aphrodite!
Wiping his hand over his face, he finished his drink and stood up from the bar. He was just going to go find his friends and tell them he was going home with or without them. He'd just call an Uber to send a cruiser to get him home if he had to. He was way too tired to deal with this shit.
Scanning the crowd for familiar faces, his eyes stopped instead on a stranger. Taller by a head than anyone in his immediate vicinity with striking features and even more striking eyes, Al was entranced by the man. He blinked slowly for a moment, wondering when he'd suddenly become so alert when just a moment ago he was pooped. He pushed the stray thought from his mind and smoothed back his hair, knowing it wouldn't stay in place no matter what he did. He had to talk to that guy, he just had to!
He wove through the crowd, intent on finding him, when he suddenly bumped into one of his friends.
"Oh! Hey, Al. We were just about to come get you. We were gonna grab something to eat, hit a movie, and go home. We're all tired from finals and kinda decided this was a bad idea." He laughed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.
Oh.
Alfred cast another glance around the crowd. Not seeing the man that he was looking for, he frowned and sighed, but then nodded. It had been what he wanted, after all. To go home. There would be other guys on better nights. "Alright, then. Let's go. I'm so ready to hit the hay, you have no clue, dude."
His friend laughed. "I dunno, man. I think I have a pretty good idea. Finals, man. Finals." Alfred laughed along as they collected their friends and left.
Misc.
Alfred is a neo hipster. Obv.
