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horrorslashergirl · 3 years

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Slasher OC: Decebal Avram Chirilă

Full Name: Decebal Avram Chirilă

Nickname(s): Dacia, Dece, The Impaler, Vladislav, Tiger, Lynx, Dracula, Casanova

Age: 38

Gender: Male

Nationality: Romanian

Place of Birth: Bucharest, Romania

Current Location: Travels from country to country

Occupation: Former Romanian Soldier; Now Hitman

Languages: Romanian, English, German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish

Appearance:

Height: 6'8

Weight: 240lbs

Body Type: Middle Bulky and Atheltic

Skin Color: Warm Beige

Hair Color: Dark Brown

Hair Style: Short on the sides and longer on top, wavy

Eye Color: Pale Grey, almost white, giving the impression he is blind

Face Claim: Stephen James

Clothing: He opts for comfortable clothing mostly because of his job as a hitman and because he is always on the run. He mostly goes with black T-shirts or shirts, a khaki army coat with many pockets, along with camo army pants again with many pockets and black combat boots. He has a long black scarf with the colors of the Romanian flag trimmed along that belonged to his father.

Other features: He has many scars on his broad back and down his arms; his back's scars are covered by tattoos of an eagle and a grim reaper with two swords in an X shape. His has full sleeve tattoos down his arms, picturing all kind of nature scenarios from his country, mountains and wild animals and AK-47's on each forearm. His neck, chest and legs are also covered by tattoos along with his hands. This guy is all inked up. He also has a silver earing on his right ear. He also wears an eyepatch that is covering his scarred eye that he got from a fight with his brother Alexander, the scar mimiking the ones Alexander has, coming from his eyebrow down his eye and over his cheek.

Weapons: Twin Swords, Twin Guns, and throwing knives.

Power/Skills:

Murderous expertise

Brute strength

Skilled usage of weaponry

Skill in hand-to-hand combat

Knifesmanship

Swordsmanship

Multilingual

Cunning Nature

Charisma

Driving expertise

Ruthlessness

Fearlessness

Manipulation

Marksmanship

Master tactician and strategist

Stealth mastery

Symbols: Here is the link to Decebal's symbols

History/Bio:

Decebal was named after a Romanian king by his parents, father Apostol Chirilă, and his mother, Maria Stratulat of Moldovic heritage. They were a poor family that lived in Bucharest during the communist times, a hard period for them. Decebal's father, Apostol was one of the rebels that were against this form of a system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

Because of this Apostol and Maria, along with their three years old son, Decebal, were dragged into the communistic jails where they were tortured in all kinds of ways from whipping to starvation to being chained into coldness.

Decebal tried to protect his parents even though he was a small child and the army warden that took care of the horrific jails was surprised by the child's braveness and he took him away from his parents, not before forcing him to watch how his parents were killed brutally.

During the rest of his childhood and teenage years, Decebal spent most of his life in the dark underground jail, training with the soldiers, doing hard work. Despite that, the warden thought Decebal about all kinds of languages, cultures, and history.

'Just because you're a stray dog that doesn't mean you cannot learn to bark and bite.'

In his late teenage years as he grew into an adult man, he got more to the light outside, following the warden wherever he went and did was his so-called 'father' figure did; smoke, drink and got laid with all the ladies.

The warden's words during a drunken late-night:

'You know boy, you will do something big, much bigger than you can imagine. I saw how all these sluts looked at you... You make them fall into your arms like they are desperate whores.'

'Use everything you got; charms, brains, muscles. In this world, there are the ones that walk every inch of the ground as they own it and the ones that follow, all chained. Tell me, boy... Which one you are?'

One of the greatest abilities that Decebal earned during years in the darkness was that he got so used to it that now as an adult, he sees perfectly into the darkness, just like cats do.

Some people called Decebal 'Lynx'; the moniker originates from the fact that Lynx has exceptional night vision, remarkable hearing, and incredible instincts. The spiritual lesson Lynx carries to you is a reminder to partake of quiet observance, remembering there’s more to the world than what’s accessible through the physical eyes and ears alone.

After communism fell down in Romania, Decebal still maintained the attitude he grew up around; being sadistic, cold, and cruel. People weren't too fond of his attitude; his habits including fighting and torturing people that opposed him, getting laid with other men's wives, strolling down the streets like he owned everything.

He disappeared from Romania when there was a reward on his head to be finally executed. The Romanian army was hot on his trail, turning against him, but he simply vanished.

He strolls from country to country, not having a definitive home and working as a rogue hitman to earn money and to survive.

After a brutal fight between him and his twin little brother, Alexander; the two brothers which resulted in both of them almost dead, they get on an agreement of peace between them, with the help of their third part, their little sister Nadia.

Family: His little brother Alexander Chirilă and his little sister Nadia Nikolina Chirilă

His favorite killing style:

He prefers a kill that will put on a good show, he will shot his victims in both their knees, then he will dismember them with his sharp twin swords.

Personality:

Decebal has two paths of personality; the civilian one and the hitman one, that sometimes cross path depending on the situation at hand. In hi day to day life, he is a charming, handsome man, confident and sure of himself, but also having a modesty edge, just to draw people in closer, because he loves the attention, having a God-like complex.

Despite his childhood, he is a very educated man that speaks many languages, sometimes taking people by surprise, he can even put on fake accents. He also has vast knowledge about other countries history, mostly because that's what his 'father-figure' talked a lot about.

He is a flirt, he simply adores to make women swon by his charming looks and mysterious persona wherever he goes, people always wondering from where he comes. He knows how to sweet-talk people, being extremly manipulative. His looks; big and strong, in his eyes a flaming white glow.

You will rarely see Decebal without his charming smile or dark smirk that makes the ladies sigh and faint. He always puts on a winning attitude, knowing for creating many divorces along his travelings.

Here goes his saying: 'If the female raised her tail, who I am to deny.'

He has a romantic side, after all he does speaks the romance languages, but it's highly influenced his his Casanova attitude.

He is blunt; this man will tell if you're damn gorgeous or if you're down-right ugly or stupid. He has no problem putting his opinions straight on the table.

His favorite drink: Țuică- is a traditional Romanian spirit that contains ~ 24–65% alcohol by volume (usually 40–55%), prepared only from plums.

His favorite food: Sarma is a dish of vine, cabbage, monk's rhubarb, kale or chard leaves rolled around a filling of grains, like bulgur or rice, minced meat, or both. It is found in the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire from the Middle East to Southeastern Europe.

His scent: Decebal's scent could be described as a 'game of seduction' with an "exciting rush" of citrus and cool spice top notes. Pungent bergamot "bites" with freshness, revived by cardamom and lavender. Caviar gives a provocative and erotic touch “like a trickle of sweat on a man’s chiseled body.” Masculine and rough notes of tobacco and orris root facilitate the heat of the composition. He has that scent that could be described as smoky confidence irresistible to women.

Other Characteristics:

He is a very good dancer, especially traditional ones and he also knows singing. Attending important parties with his 'father-figure' he learned from the women how to dance and sing. The women basically made him such a charismatic man.

He is a heavy drinker and holds his alcohol like it's water; his moldovic genes showing off.

He is more of a night person that a day one, mostly because of his very good nocturnal sight.

He is pretty much an Outlaw.

His accent sounds like italian, latin, but with a little bit of russian or another slavic accent. (That's how a Austrian woman described his accent one night)

He is a master at Poker. Another way he earns a lot of money is through poker and plus, he is a master cheater. FUN FACT HERE: He won a man's wife through poker for one night.

He is a sword swallower, bonus he has no gag reflex.

He also loves to smoke from his pipe.

============================================

There lived a certain man in Romania long ago

He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow

Most people look at him with terror and with fear

But to Bucharest chicks he was such a lovely dear

He could preach the Bible like a preacher

Full of ecstasy and fire

But he also was the kind of teacher

Women would desire

DE DE DECEBAL

Lover of the ROMANIAN queen

There was a cat that really was gone

DE DE DECEBAL

Romania's greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on

He ruled the Romanian land and never mind the Tsar

But the kazachok he danced really wunderbar

In all affairs of state he was the man to please

But he was real great when he had a girl to squeeze

For the queen he was no wheeler dealer

Though she'd heard the things he'd done

She believed he was a holy healer

Who would heal her son

DE DE DECEBAL

Lover of the Romanian queen

There was a cat that really was gone

DE DE DECEBAL

Romania's greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on

(This is an interpretation of the song ‘Rasputin’ by Boney M, mostly because the song inspired me into creating him)

For power became known to more and more people

The demands to do something about this outrageous

Man became louder and louder

"This man's just got to go!" declared his enemies

But the ladies begged "Don't you try to do it, please"

No doubt this Decebal had lots of hidden charms

Though he was a brute they just fell into his arms

Then one night some men of higher standing

Set a trap, they're not to blame

"Come to visit us" they kept demanding

And he really came

DE DE DECEBAL

Lover of the Romanian queen

They put some poison into his țuică

DE DE DECEBAL

Romania's greatest love machine

He drank it all and said "I feel fine"

DE DE DECEBAL

Lover of the Romanian queen

They didn't quit, they wanted his head

DE DE DECEBAL

Romania's greatest love machine

[Spoken:] Oh, those Romanians...

=======================================================

But when his drinking and lusting and his hunger

#Decebal Avram Chirila #Slasher OC #Romanian OC #Original characters #Hitman #Outlaw

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alystudor · 3 years

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— ♔ In the past, people were born royal and for ALYS TUDOR the TWENTY-SIX-year-old CROWN PRINCESS of WALES, that is a tradition SHE intends to keep. To others, SHE looks an awful lot like MADELAINE PETSCH and has been painted as THE MEEK SPARE but behind closed doors, SHE is TIMID & BLUNT but also DIGNIFIED & STOIC. It has also been said they are BETROTHED to MATTHEW GOODE, WILLIAM MOSELEY, ALEXANDER LUDWIG, AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON, OR UTP.

BASIC INFORMATION

NAME: Alys Cedwyn Tudor

NICKNAMES: Aly-Cat [her brother]; Wyn [her father]; Aly [her parents & closest friends]; Al [her betrothed; a nickname in which she despises]

DATE OF BIRTH: April 16, 2094

AGE: 26

HOME TOWN: Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

CURRENT RESIDENCE: Russia

OCCUPATION: Crown Princess of Wales

LANGUAGES: Welsh, English, Italian

PARENTS: King Ewen Ceri Tudor (father); Queen Anna Caitrin Tudor [ née Jones ] (mother)

BROTHERS AND SISTERS: Prince Alwyn Dafydd Tudor (deceased).

HUSBAND OR WIFE: Prince xxxx xxxxx (betrothed; fiancé)

SIGNIFICANT OTHERS: Her Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Dylan; Emiln Evans (best friend)

RELATIONSHIP SKILLS: While Alys is rather reserved and tends to remain quiet, she listens intently. She is kind and surprisingly openminded to more than she lets on. While she has become good at feigning interest, particularly at royal functions, if she is annoyed, upset, or bored, she will politely let you know and move on. She’s loyal to those she cares about most in this world and would sooner keep a secret for someone than to destroy their good name, unless it’s going to be at the expense of her family or someone she deeply cares about. The only person she has come to despise most in this world is the man she is supposed to marry, despite trying her hardest to genuinely love him. And while hate isn’t a word she takes lightly, she has determined that if she ever meets the perpetrator who murdered her brother, she’s likely to return the favor; but little does she know, it’s the man she’s trying to love.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

(TW: Dyslexia mention)

HEIGHT: 5′6″

HAIR COLOUR: Red.

EYE COLOUR: Brown

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Alys’ most distinguishing features are her red hair and fair skin tone.

DRESS STYLE: Alys prefers to dress casually in jeans, sweaters, and the occasional t-shirt, unless in the eyes of the public. Then you can find her wearing dresses and things tailored for her body type. While she’s never been one for keeping up with fashion trends, her stylist does know just how to dress her to keep her current with the times.

PHYSICAL HABITS: Alys does not partake in vices such as drinking, smoking, or drugs.

MANNERISMS: Alys is a very poised and polite person. Her etiquette training came from her grandmother, who believed women should be seen as ladies. She has a particular way of doing things, which sometimes confuses people or gets an unwarranted laugh because of how old fashioned Alys can come off as, but she does know when to relax, and that’s usually in the company of her closest friends. However, when she’s nervous or anxious, she rubs her hands together without really realizing. It’s also very clear when she’s annoyed or angry, but instead of yelling, she remains eerily calm, sometimes expressing her anger through the tension in her voice or simply walking off.

HEALTH: Alys is in peak physical health. She exercises regularly, including riding horses. She goes for morning runs and enjoys swimming laps, when no one else is in the pool. She’ll occasionally visit the gym, but tries to get outside as much as she can. She eats fruit and veg with very little red meat, preferring poultry and seafood. She does treat herself to sweets every now and then, especially traditional Welsh cakes. Alys does have dyslexia. Only a very select few people know this about her. And she has worked very hard to overcome it, though she still struggles on occasion.

BACKGROUND

(TW: Murder, Death)

For Alys, growing up second to her brother was as much of a challenge as a rat trying to free itself from an inhumane glue trap…impossible. His bright personality and commanding presence had always lit up the room as if King Ewen, himself, had already entered the building. And it didn’t take the younger of the two to realize her place in the world; silent and in the background. Though extremely bright and well rounded in her studies, the young woman remained quiet watching as her brother grew more fit and apt to take the crown someday. Of course, no one saw what was coming. In everyone’s minds, the belief that Alwyn would one day rule Wales, and quite successfully, had come as default. But of course, there had to be a set path for Alys. Like any great spare, she was set to marry.

Arranged to a man she quietly despised, Alys didn’t counteract her mother and father’s wishes. Though loving him didn’t come easy. While she could tell he longed to be in the spotlight, much like her brother, she thought nothing of it. Instead, she went about her daily life, sometimes bluntly wrangling him back into his place by reminding him of whom he would be marrying. Life carried on until a trip to Rome. King Ewen, trusting in his son to negotiate policies with the leaders in Italy, sent the young Crown Prince, and his wife. And with some convincing, Alwyn managed to bring along his sister and future brother-in-law.

The trip was a success. The Crown Prince had brought together two nations just as his father had hoped; a sign that he would be a great ruler someday. And to celebrate, Alwyn, along with Alys’ betrothed; a young liaison who had been present at the meeting of the two countries; and a young diplomat to Rome, left the women of their own accord for a night out in Tor Bella Monaca to celebrate. Not exactly the greatest place for two princes, but the perfect coverup for the heinous crime that Alys’ betrothed was about to commit.

Word of the Crown’s death came sometime over the next several hours and the next several months were like a blur. No one had suspected a thing, and the one coherent witness that was there that night was threatened to great lengths. However, in all of this, Alys’ life was thrown upside down when she was soon announced as the new Crown Princess of Wales.

Mourning her brother’s passing would be put on hold as she would take over a role she never expected. But relations between the country of Wales and Italy had turned sour. And with tensions mounting elsewhere in the world, Alys’ father and mother felt it best to send her off to Russia for protection. Losing their pride and joy had nearly destroyed their family, and the idea of possibly losing their daughter as well, and the right to hold the throne in the future, couldn’t be fathomed. But what they didn’t know was that the murderer of their son was engaged to their daughter and set to be the future King of Wales, if all continued to go according to his plan.

HEADCANONS

Though her brother was the center of attention and the apple of their parents’ eye, Alys was still extremely close to him. They would often come to each other and have conversations about life. Him, spilling the details and annoyances of holding the title of Crown, and her, explaining how invisible she had felt at times. Surprisingly enough, this helped to keep their relationship solid, and if one was ever jealous of the other, they would speak it out loud. They were each other’s rock, so when Alwyn was killed, Alys had felt like she had truly lost a part of herself.

Because of how open Alwyn was with her about his duties as the Crown Prince and how observant she was over the years, Alys does have more of an understanding of what is expected of her than her parents and the media think.

While she seems rather reserved and quiet in the public eye, Alys does enjoy having a good time with her closest friends. However, alcohol and recreational drugs have never been a desire of hers.

Horses are a passion for her. Coming from a long line of horse breeders, she knows her stuff. It was also her biggest escape, when the focus would be on her brother. She has many trophies and ribbons from the competitions she’s entered over the years.

Dylan, her Pembroke Welsh Corgi, is whom she misses the most. Despite being betrothed and having her parents back home, the small dog has been the one that’s heard her sobs, seen her tears, and somehow managed to make her laugh despite how broken hearted she’s felt since her brother’s death and the passing of the title of Crown.

Alys enjoys jazz and classical music. It helps her relax and to clear her mind. But she secret loves hard rock. Only Alwyn knew this about her, and they would have jam sessions together to let out the day’s frustrations.

She enjoys studying history and how the world came to be in its current state; a quality vital to ruling Wales someday. She particularly enjoys reading about rulers of the past and the United States fascinates her greatly. She also enjoys reading biographies, but does enjoy a good dystopian tale every now and then or a book about the stars and space.

More to come...

#{i wasn't made to fall in line; about}#wor.intro

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sandriinehebert · 4 years

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the lombardi family

FATHER: CHRISTIAN LOMBARDI

Christian was born in a wealthy family of business men. They made their name in managing hotels and restaurants, making money just by breathing. He was promised to a similar future, but his parents divorced when he was still a kid and the situation was no longer the same. He spent the rest of his childhood living with his mother who wasted all the money his father saved for their future on lottery and pointless things. Through various jobs, Christian managed to pay for university tuition, but he failed to meet the required grades to pursue his studies. His biggest dream was to open a restaurant, and he was hoping a degree from the Institut d’Hôtellerie du Québec would help him out. Instead, he worked several jobs and saved as much money as possible to suffice himself, and eventually his girlfriend. He knew from their first date that he would marry that pretty waitress. There was something so magical about Monica, something that made him promise he would never let her go. And he never did. They raised two children together as best as they could and now that they’re all grown up he runs a little restaurant in La Petite Italie. He hopes he can retire soon, pass it on to his sous-chef and enjoy the last couple of good years with his wife.

MOTHER: MONICA “NIKKI” LOMBARDI née MARIANO

Monica was very different from her older brothers, Luciano and Frederico, she had no interest in big studies nor in leaving the country to find better jobs. She dropped out of high school and started working at a restaurant as a waitress alongsides Christian, who was then working in the kitchens. While still working there, she also helped her parents at the hair salon. A couple of years before Christian and Nikki welcomed their children, Nikki helped a childhood friend open her own kindergarten. She kept the three jobs for as long as she could, supporting both her own family and her mother. When Adamo was born, the parents decided that Christian would start working a little less. The decision for Christian to become a stay-at-home dad became official with the birth of Alessandra. He had to postpone his dreams so that Monica could fulfill hers. Eventually, she slowed down a bit, but it was hard for her. Nikki absolutely loved working and she did not regret it one bit, even though she sacrificed a lot of family times for the sake of providing for her children wom she loves deeply.

GRANDMOTHER (deceased): CORINNA MARIANO née SIMEONE

Born in Italy, she immigrated with her family before World War Two. The Simeone’s established in Massachussetts, precisely in Boston, where they ran an Italian delicatessen. She was born in a large family of 7 children, three sons and four daughters. Corinna, aged 18, moved to Montréal, Canada, when she met her husband, a veteran from the Canadian army named Dominic Mariano whose family were second generation italo-québécois. She started a hair salon in La Petite Italie and ran her business with the help of her husband until she hit the respectable age of 70 years-old. Corinna and Dominic had three children, Luciano, Frederico and Monica. The first two moved back to Massachussetts and opened a law firm together. Dominic died long before Corinna, whose favorite hobbies were to listen to clients at the salon and take care of her grand children.

She was especially close with Sandrine. Despite not agreeing to most of her life choices, and not knowing about Sandrine’s bisexuality, she was the closest she had ever been with her Nonna. She did not have to befriend anyone, since she had the only best friend she needed. That could explain why she is so terrible at initiating friendships nowadays. Her death was one of the saddest moments in Sandrine’s life, because she lost her confident and her mentor. She came to Boston to try and glue some puzzle pieces of her grandma’s past back together.

BROTHER: ADAMO “ADAM” LOMBARDI (faceclaim: skylar astin)

Adam Lombardi is a 35 years-old hockey player for the Boston Bruins. He graduated from the Université de Montréal in communications. He’s working on retiring from the hockey team very soon so he can go back to his roots. He was approached by a local Bostonian TV channel to join as a commentator for the games. Growing up, Adamo was a decent big brother. He would defend his little sister at school and help her learn how to skate, since he was so naturally talented at it. He was big into sports, but also in anything that demanded communication. He did improvisation in high school and that was when he knew he wanted to pursue into communications. however, life had other plans and his dedication to hockey took over his other ambitions. He was recruited by junior teams until he graduated university, and eventually by the Boston Bruins. He was not mad about it, considering how Montréal Canadiens was one of the worst teams in the whole league. He was approached by the Golden Knights of Las Vegas at some point, but the Bruins offered to increase his pay check to keep him around. And it worked.

Adamo and Alessandra have a very complex relationship. Growing up, they were extremely close. They were like soulmates. But when fame got to Adamo’s head, and when he moved to Boston for early trainings, he was never the same. He became entitled and noisy. He was not nurturing or caring, he was indiscreet and limitating. He still supports Sandrine with her projects, but they have their moments where they can’t stand each other. She loves him and could not see her life without him, but there is a lot they need to figure out in order to fix their relationship.

ABOUT THE KIDS LIVING AWAY

The Lombardi’s travelled at least twice a year to Massachussetts, so it was inevitable that Adamo and Alessandra developped a connection with this land. They appreciate the fact that Boston is not that far after all, so it’s easy for the parents to stop for a visit. They have this tradition of celebrating Christmas two times (their father is jewish, but after years of living among Italian catholics, they kind of grew to love Christmas). Mom, dad and big brother will all stop by Sandrine’s place for Christmas eve and day, leave on the 26th and the siblings will travel back to montréal from December 31st to January 2nd. This tradition might change though, but that’s usually their thing.

Alessandra visits them around once every two months and takes a whole week off to catch up with her parents. Adamo stops for a weekend less often. He grew to be more independent than his sister.

The parents respect that their children have ambitions, but they hope they will come back home eventually. Alessandra feels this pressure more than her brother, and it affects her. Even after 5 years in the states, she still does not really consider it a home. She does not understand one bit how anything works in the USA, much less the healthcare system. Her heart belongs in Montréal with her parents. She’s like homesick in her own house whilst Adamo is having the time of his life as a Bostonian. That’s another thing that causes them to drift away; he adjusted well while she is still struggling.

FUN FACTS

Adamo is surprisingly tall, compared to his sister and his parents.

When they were younger, Adamo and Alessandra used to play hockey in the street or on an ice ring. She was actually a talented shooter and, him, a terrible goalie. He taught his sister how to ice skate, focusing on speed and power rather than grace and ease. Therefore, it explains why Sandrine was the fastest student in all of her skating classes and competitions.

When she started competing across the province and needed a partner to rehearse her dances, Adamo did it. He was, again, surprisingly good at it.

In their house, there was an antique piano that belonged to Corinna’s family. She used to play it until she was too old to do it. She taught them how to sing along the melodies, hence why both can actually bat a tune.

Being a hair stylist (even without proper education), she taught Alessandra the basics of it. Quickly, Sandrine was cutting her mom’s and her brother’s hair. She got some skills that encouraged her to add a hair salon part to her business.

Adamo is very much a mama’s boy, while Alessandra gets along with both parents equally. Even if Christian and Monica tells them they have no favorite, Adamo clearly is.

The parents forced their kids to attend French speaking schools, which is unusual for italo-québécois. Historically, most Italian immigrants chose to learn English. But the Lombardi parents wanted them to fit in the province. They spoke very little Italian at home, only what their Nonna taught them, and learned French easily. All the way from elementary school to superior education school (called CÉGEP), they had second language English classes. Adamo is talented with communications, but it turns out Alessandra is better in languages. She was at the top of her class, both in French and in English. Her first career choice was not business or beauty related, it was translation.

Growing up, the siblings had the dream to build a large house in the suburbs of Montréal so they could live with their parents and eventually with their respective families.

They also had a dream to become both politicians and rule whatever they would rule together. Let’s be honest, they would fight too much and put the world into anarchy, but a dream is a dream.

Adamo is the only person who is aware of Sandrine’s bisexuality. He supports it and will not reveal this “secret” to their quite traditional parents.

#biography.#(( if anyone ever takes skylar as a fc i'll remove that ))#(( ALSO YES i know lea and skylar are both jewish but not from the same origins ))#(( i am so sorry!!!! i tried my best to find a jewish actor in the right age range that looked like her and wasn't extra popular ))#(( this got long???? ))

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joedunphy · 7 years

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Caprica

(Originally posted on another, apparently defunct, blogging host)

Miscellanious ramblings … If you’re looking for an essay that holds together, you’re going to be in the wrong place, today, because I’m in no mood to write one. I’ve just gotten done banging my head into the proverbial wall trying to set up a mirror to this blog on the not always so very well documented Tumblr system, and am frustrated, stressed, tired and hungry. But blog.com is determined to keep its servers clean of blogs that haven’t been updated often enough, because at ¼ of a cent per meg, diskspace is far too expensive to waste.

A meg, for those who don’t know, works out to be about 66 pages of printed text, meaning that if you have written 660 pages of blog posts - the equivalent of a thick, university sized tome’s worth of posting - the service will free up 2.5 cents worth of diskspace by wiping out your work. Think of it. If they did this to a mere 60 users, each of whom would lose a few hundred pages of work, before they knew it, they’d have saved up enough to buy themselves a snicker’s bar. Not just any snicker’s bar, either, but one of those large ones, the kind that can take one back to many happy hours spent in train stations across this great land of ours, waiting for connecting rides. Sure, they’d have to go to Walgreens to get it - in a movie theatre, we’d be looking at something more like 60 or 90 users who’d have to lose a decade or two of posting before the staff could reap the collective fruits of their disk clearing labors, in all of its nougaty goodness - but if you’ve ever been in a computer lab, you know how much those snack foods mean to the programmers. So I’d better get going, whether I’m up to it or not, and if the quality of my writing should suffer as a result?

Dude, we’re talking nougat and peanuts. It’s nothing to be trifled with.

If the reports I’ve heard about Caprica’s ratings are accurate, then this show probably won’t be on for much longer. Does it deserve to be? Should one catch it before it is cancelled, knowing that short running shows don’t tend to find their way into syndication? Maybe. I will say that I find it greatly superior to the vast bulk of what Syfy produces, but then that isn’t very high praise. We are talking about the same channel that brought us “Mansquito” and “Termination Shock”, that movie about the girl who shoots starship destroying fireballs out of her chest. Have they done better, this time? Something that a grown up can watch without hoping that nobody will catch him watching it?

Again … maybe. It’s deeply flawed. At times, the dialog has made no sense.

Consider Joseph Adams / Yussef Adama’s ramble about there being no flowers on Tauron - “not a one” - and how he burst into tears the first time he saw them growing on Caprica, when asked if he would bring his wife and daughter back from the grave, if he could. Is that the kind of tangent a grieving widower would go off on, leaving the listener to wonder what on earth was its relevance? Yes, yes, they’ve emigrated from the horrible place, and just as their lives are finally sweet, mother and daughter are no longer to be found living them? That’s the reason for the otherwise mystifying speech?

But then think about what he tells his son, as he confronts him about his having skipped class in “Tauron school”, explaining that showing up is about being proud of who he was, of being Tauron. Then think of the immigrants in your own family. Yes, the lives they left behind were hard, that’s why they were immigrants, but were they as bleak and gray as the one people were living on Tauron, if we accept the above explanation of Adama’s otherwise pointless speech? If so, then what was there to be proud of? In the real world, there was real beauty mixed in with the hardship that our forebearers left behind, some collective creation that the people could point to and say, this is what we did. Life was hard, but it wasn’t joyless. That joy is what we see altogether absent in the fictional Tauron culture, aside from that moment of dark humor when the grandmother says that the Tauron children play jacks with the bones of the children who lost at jacks, deadpanning the joke until she gets the desired level of terror in Joseph Adama.

What do Taurons eat? They seem to be a vaguely defined combination of every Mediterranean, Latin and Middle Eastern culture known, a fair number of these cultures having cuisines so developed that one can fill libraries with books about any given one, yet as the young William Adama shows up with lunch for an abusive friend of his uncle’s, what we see is a sandwich, something called “fritos”. Really? That’s it? They couldn’t spend a few dollars, and hire one of North America’s thousands of financially strapped and desperate chefs to do some kind of fusion thing, just to give a little color to the setting? No, they couldn’t. What music do Taurons listen to? Again, starving musicians are in plentiful supply, the real world source cultures have rich traditions - just think of the words “Latin Music” or Verdi or Vivaldi or … surely we’ll at least hear a few folk songs coming? No, we never hear a note. What stories do they tell? None are ever told. In every way, those creating this culture fail to create it, and don’t even seem to try, or even to farm out the effort to those who’d be happy to try, and do so for a pittance.

These may seem like little things, trivia not worth commenting on, but the absence of those little things are one of the reasons why science fiction doesn’t tend to really be literature. Those little things that a writer shares … the snatch of song, the scent of beignets sizzling in the oil, the reddened shadows cast by the setting sun across the columns of a synagogue - it’s those little, “unimportant” things, the things we hardly think to notice, that make a place seem real, like more than a cartoon, and that becomes doubly important when the place we’re looking at isn’t real. If one says “Sicilian” and one’s audience has grown up in New York or Chicago, life gives the writer a boost up as he reaches his listeners, because we all have associations with that word that it will conjure up - but not if one says “Tauron”, because there are no Taurons. That feeling is something that the writers and their coworkers on the set have to create from scratch, and what kind of feeling do they create?

We see the Tauron people being treated like dirt, stereotyped, robbed and scorned, and some of us will start out liking that, because in a fictional setting, in which the viewer will habitually let down his guard, it puts on display something that the population of an Anglo-Saxon dominated country has been very good at not letting itself see. As many have observed, in the America of today, it’s OK to be very, very white, and OK to be very, very not white (ie. Black), but not so OK to be anywhere in between. One can watch the same people who would fawn over a member of the Gangster Disciples, just to prove how “sensitive” they were, think nothing of talking about Mexicans, or Arabs, or Italians in a manner not at all unlike that we see Taurons being spoken of, on the show. Doesn’t look so pretty when it’s fictionalised, does it?

Or does it? Even as we watch the Tauron characters simmering in a stew of resentment and humilation all too familiar to all too many of those of Mediterranean descent in this country, we don’t see them doing anything to earn better for themselves. The “hero”, Joseph Adama, is a crooked lawyer who forgets to talk to the judge before having a bribe sent to him, and asks his brother to kill his new found friend’s wife, to “even things out”, after watching his thug brother beat up the friend, who seems to be the Bill Gates of 150,000BC - and yet never seems to think of resenting this, and maybe pulling a few strings to get the matter taken care of, using the influence his wealth would offer him, even at a politically awkward moment. The hostility to be found in racism isn’t a hellish thing for those it oppresses, merely because it is hostility, but because it in unearned hostility, something that the one to whom it attaches can do nothing to escape. It is a tragic thing for those around them, because those it drives off into the shadows have something to offer, their companionship at the very least, and often far more than that. Caprica fails to get that, and in doing so, having passed on any opportunity to make the Taurons seem like flesh and blood, declines to even make them into even slightly lovable cartoons. We don’t know them, and hope that we never do.

Which, as far as that part of plot goes, leaves us with no story to tell. Real stories are about characters, these constructs with whom something resonates in our subconsciouses, letting us connect with those who aren’t really there. Even the villains have to have a few virtues, some reason for us to feel what they are feeling, or for us, they won’t be there at all. The Taurons just aren’t, at least not at the moment. But, perhaps, if the show should linger, they will be.

The show seems to do better with its more white bread characters, especially Zoe, who is played by Alessandra Torresani, who is playing a piece of software in this world in which Italians (Taurons) can only be played by Mexicans, and a pair of light featured yuppies can have a dark featured daughter without anybody asking awkward questions about the mailman’s love life. The character has seemed to be the target of a significant amount of mockery in the blogosphere, judging from my recent skimming, much of it undeserved, I would think.

Zoe does seem to take herself with lethal seriousness, but as we are talking about a 16 year old - who seems to have slipped down to being 15, now - that would be what we would expect of her, were she real. Can we believe in a 15 year old suicide bomber (her boyfriend) being driven by religious fanaticism? Picture a chorus of voices echoing out of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem yelling “yes”. Children younger than that have done worse, in real life. The scene I’m thinking of, most of all, is the dancing scene, which I’ve seen some describe as a puppy dog flirtation between a young technician and his hardware, the authors finding this most strange, calling it a “ratings killer”. I think that they’re misreading the scene.

The robot contains the reconstructed personality of a young girl, whose consciousness lives on through the ill conceived magic of artificial intelligence. She is trapped inside, her internal self-image (which we see in the shorts in which Ms. Torresani appears) having not caught up to her external reality (that of a one ton piece of equipment). The scene she’s living and the scene the technician are living aren’t one and the same, and the disconnect between the two has the potential to drive her even crazier than she probably is about to become.

The technician has cause to suspect that somebody is present inside that robot body, not in the sense of an actual human consciousness being present, but that of there being some sort of self-awareness. Consider the scene in which the robot, having been bound in place. One doesn’t really see a steam shovel panicking because it’s been bound to a flatbed on a train; this is the behavior we’d associate with a living being who had been left bound and immobile, panicking at her own helplessness. “Her?”, one might ask, much as the technician’s soon to be defingered friend did, as he asked why the hardware was being feminised, but men have been feminising inanimate objects for centuries in real life. Consider the pronoun we use for ships. It’s an expression of affection for that which is created by its creator, and such affection seems instinctual, a part of the drive that pushes us to create, even when we know that that which is created can’t possibly return the affection. But an actually conscious entity? Those who created that would move from merely being artists to adopting a more parental role.

I’ve read comments that while Zoebot would resent the crudeness of the technician looking at her chest and praising it, Zoebot seemed to “eat it up”, but again, let us consider the circumstances: Zoebot isn’t letting the technician know that there is any literal femininity about her at all. As far as the technician knows, all that he is looking at is a metal plate, one that he is responsible for maintaining and will be needed by this machine that he is seeing pass the Turing test. We might see Ms. Torresani’s look of dismay as he utters those words, but he doesn’t. As for the dancing that follows … from Zoe’s point of view, she’s a young woman, trapped where she doesn’t wish to be, and the technician is a boy about her own age, who is giving her what she hasn’t had for a while and hasn’t had enough of, ever - attention, as they dance. To the technician, what is happening is that he is bringing the robot to life, because he has no idea just how alive it already is.

So, again, the problem is the same as before - a failure of the imagination - but the failure is on the part of the reviewers and some in the audience, not on the part of the writers. They’re succeeding admirably in exploring the natural consequences of an unnatural situation, and we need only be open to noticing that. If one if to watch this show, while it last, I think that this is what one would watch it for. But few viewers probably will, insisting on watching that sort of scene with a literalness it doesn’t call for, and so if you want to do your viewing, I’d recommend that you do so, soon. I give this one a season before it is cancelled, and look forward to being proved wrong.

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