Call Me Saturday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wheyoftheadept) wrote2020-04-17 11:49 pm
wheyoftheadept) wrote2020-04-17 11:49 pm
Edited app repost for background
Character Name: Saturday aka Makoto Ramirez
Fandom: Shadowrun TTRPG, OC
Character Journal:wheyoftheadept
OU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? Canon OC
Canon point: Since it's a tabletop campaign, the best I can say is right after a series of extremely pyrrhic victories that have almost gotten them home again.
PB: Michelle Yeoh circa her debut film Yes Madam! if anyone besides me knows that one.
SETTING BACKGROUND
Shadowrun is a dystopian cyberpunk setting a la Gibson’s Neuromancer which, about fifty years ago, also acquired unreasonable amounts of magical bullshit. It turns out the setting is on a thousands-of-years cycle where the presence of magic waxes and wanes, and that the cycle was turning back into high magic just as the cyberpunk dystopia was getting underway. So now we have fascist corps and lovecraftian horrors, elves and orcs and transhumanism, magic and bullets. And in the middle of it all, shadowrunners - disposable mercenary operatives used in the secret wars between the powers ancient and modern that are tearing the world apart.
HISTORY
PERSONALITY
Main personality traits: Saturday is confident, charming, generous, outgoing, and these days always just a little bit angry. But she cares, and she tries; if you’re in pain, and she can reach you, she’ll try to help. It’s not that she’s an especially empathic person, it’s just that as far as she was raised, that’s the thing you do. See a problem, fix that problem. If someone’s being hurt in front of you, if something’s happening that just isn’t right, do something about. Someone has to.
Flaws or negative personality traits: Saturday is an a n g e r e y g i r l. She’s always been angry, but pretended not to be; she had nothing to be angry about, after all. The bad years were behind her. She was safe and loved. Recent events, however, have called that anger to simmer just below the surface, and it does not sit comfortably; it comes out in ways she doesn’t necessarily like, and doesn’t always mean.
She’s also impatient, blunt, bossy, and prefers to react on instinct - that last one being both a flaw and a blessing, depending on the situation. And because she was raised to be a hero, failing in that can really knock her down, in a way few other things will.
Also, she does do things that other people would consider reckless, though in her defense what’s risky for her is set a little farther out than most because of her abilities. That being said, however, Saturday has absolutely no sense of scale and doesn’t like, gut-level acknowledge that there’s any real difference between a ganger lord and a Lord of Chaos. They’re both assholes who need a good kicking, okay?
Self-image: Saturday knows she’s charming, confident and generous. She works very hard to be those things, so she’d fucking better be. Nothing phases her, and that’s all according to plan. Because if she starts freaking out, who’s gonna fix things? It’s all on her, and she can’t complain, because she’s supposed to carry it. That’s what she’s here for, after all. Has to be her. Someone else could get it wrong.
Motivation: Right now this very moment, Saturday wants to go home. And once she does get home, she’s going to eat the biggest BBQ plate from that one joint she loves, sleep for a week, and then go back to school. On account she’s realized the enemies she has to fight in order to protect her people and her patch aren’t the kind you can just kill; corps are worse than hydras for growing new heads. In order to beat them she has to be more than tough and vicious, she has to be smart,.
And she has to beat them back, not just to protect what she loves most, but also to protect the world generally. There’s a bunch of lovecraftian horrors due to bust in any day now, and the only people who know and can do something about it are apparently mostly faffing about protecting themselves and happy to let everyone else get tortured and murdered and soul-eaten as long as they get to survive and rule over what’s left. She ain’t having that. So what if people have been trying for tens of thousands years to beat these things with no success? She hasn’t had a shot at these things.
Beliefs/values: Saturday knows gods and god-like entities are real. She knows Fate as a palpable force. She just doesn’t revere any of these things; they’re spectacular and sublime, like forces of nature, but they’re also kinda, you know, not that relevant and when they become relevant, it’s mostly just a sign that shit is about to get extremely weird.
What she does believe in is the absolute right to self-determination, which for her includes physical and financial safety, because a choice made under duress is no choice at all. There might be an afterlife, but no one can prove it. What we can prove is that here and now, this life, is the life we have, and therefore people should and must be able to live those lives as fully as possible.
Opinions/attitudes: Saturday doesn’t dislike people, but she does pretend to be more fond of them than she actually is as part of her white hat knight errant identity. While she can be eloquent, her natural communication style is more rambling than precise; she expresses her feelings better in actions than words. As a rule she has no prejudices towards any particular type of person, and is willing to accept broad definitions of person under the theory that it’s not worth the risk of getting it wrong and mistreating someone.
She is aware of the anger under her skin, and dislikes it; her worst nightmare is losing control and unleashing her violence against someone who doesn’t deserve it. That would make her a monster, and she won’t be that, not ever. Is this actually something she should be concerned about as opposed to lingering trauma from being kicked into a hell dimension designed to force you to fall to your worst nature to learn you good about humility because the fucking Dweller at the fucking Threshold was blaming THEM for the Bug Shaman’s nonsense? I mean… you be the judge. But it’s a thing that preoccupies her on occasion.
Network Sample
[Saturday sits with one leg crossed over the other, her forearms braced against her shin. Her hair is mussed, her body scraped and bruised, and there’s a really magnificent shiner forming around her left eye. Nonetheless, she is wearing a charming, seemingly effortless grin.]
“If you were on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?”
[The voice from offscreen is perky, upbeat, just this side of squeaky. Saturday leans back and drapes one arm behind the chair, her smile never wavering. She meets the camera’s gaze levelly, her eyes never wavering or glancing to one side or the other.]
“A charged sat phone, a good knife, and a spool of paracord.”
[She doesn’t elaborate, and after a moment the voice continues.]
“What are three positive character traits you don't have?”
[Saturday laughs. It sounds full and rich, and is only slightly undercut by the hard glint in her eyes.]
“Humility, patience, and forbearance.”
[Her voice is subtly dry. The voice continues without missing a beat.]
“On a scale from 1 to 10, rate me as an interviewer!”
[Saturday’s grin curdles for a moment, then flares back full strength. She tilts her head to one side.]
“I’d say about an eight. Damn good job so far, but there’s always room for improvement, hey?”
[The video ends here.]
Prose Sample
Saturday wakes to a hiss, a chemical smell and a snapping electric crackle that has her kicking up from her prone position before she even opens her eyes. ‘Ni-chan’s hilt drops into her hand as she vaults over whoever is standing by her bed and takes half a second to register that she is not in the Lamb’s quarters or Sol’s safehouse, and then she grabs the nearest person she can around the waist and puts her sword to their throat.
“Who the fuck are you?” she spits, too many possibilities in front of her. Metal and tech - but Mangheath’s dead in the water - no, of course, the Governer took it over and they had a set-up like this back in Red Town, the Queen in her hive -
“Where’s Maggie?” The person, if they still are a person, in her arms has gone limp and shivering with terror, and that’s the first thing that really penetrates the cloud of fear and fury.
“Oh god I don’t wanna die - “ they’re saying, and Saturday shakes them a little.
“Who the fuck are you, where am I - “
Then lightning rips through her belly. She staggers, releasing her hostage. Her blade sinks back into her arm as another strikes ripples through her and she falls to the floor. A third. And she’s down, twitching as boots walk into and out of her range of vision. It’s like pins and needles, but everywhere, and when she fights it off enough to grab at one of the ankles passing by they shock her that one last time, and darkness takes her.
She wakes up strapped to a chair, and you know the rest.
Fandom: Shadowrun TTRPG, OC
Character Journal:
wheyoftheadeptOU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? Canon OC
Canon point: Since it's a tabletop campaign, the best I can say is right after a series of extremely pyrrhic victories that have almost gotten them home again.
PB: Michelle Yeoh circa her debut film Yes Madam! if anyone besides me knows that one.
SETTING BACKGROUND
Shadowrun is a dystopian cyberpunk setting a la Gibson’s Neuromancer which, about fifty years ago, also acquired unreasonable amounts of magical bullshit. It turns out the setting is on a thousands-of-years cycle where the presence of magic waxes and wanes, and that the cycle was turning back into high magic just as the cyberpunk dystopia was getting underway. So now we have fascist corps and lovecraftian horrors, elves and orcs and transhumanism, magic and bullets. And in the middle of it all, shadowrunners - disposable mercenary operatives used in the secret wars between the powers ancient and modern that are tearing the world apart.
HISTORY
- Born to two special forces operatives in the elven nation of Tir Tairngire, who were declared killed in the line of duty about six months later. Taken in by her aunt, a drug addict and overall horrible person, in order to get the moneys her parents’ status and death entitled her to. Not a fun time.
- At four, adopted by Hiroshi Nguyen Rodriguez aka the Dragon of Red Town aka "secrets grandpa" following the death of her aunt and aunt’s boyfriend attempting to sell her to a human trafficker, from which she was promptly rescued by her newly-adopted brother, Solomon.
- At thirteen, snuck into her father’s secret workspace and accidentally bonded with a magical artifact that took all memory of her beloved brother in exchange, but not in a malicious way; that’s just how that artifact works and it wasn’t properly secure.
- She got into the secret workspace in the first place because her father forgot to pull the door all the way shut, and he had a habit of encouraging her to snoop and sneak…
- gj secrets grandpa, you tried.
- At nineteen, decided to fully enter the shadows, like her father had been before he retired to do good. On her first run things went sideways so hard she and her team technically died fighting a ton of baby lovecraftian horrors, got rescued by someone very powerful reweaving fate to repay a debt to her father, and were instead yeeted physically to the astral plane where, after a series of horrible misadventures, they have come to rest in stable reality bubble which contains the Theran Empire, an ancient and magically advanced civilization which disappeared when magic faded out the last time, at the end of the Fourth World. Apparently, the astral is where it went.
- One of those adventures, which left her with significant scars, was being thrown by an entity called the Dweller at the Threshold into a sort of hell-trial dimension. The whole point of that plane is to force you to fall to your worst instincts, in order to make you see your flaws and bring about enlightenment. It’s a very advanced spirit journey and not one any of them were supposed to take, but the Dweller was really mad about the whole lovecraftian bug spirit thing, despite it being not her crew’s fault at all, and since it couldn’t reach the bugs it took it out on them.
- The Dweller is a neutral entity that merely maintains the spiritual integrity and balance of the metaplanes and was only patching a hole as best it could but as far as Saturday’s concerned they’re a big dumb asshole.
- This is also where she lost her arm, which her artifact sword - now semi-sapient and calling itself Solomon Silverarm - replaced with itself. Saturday calls him ‘Ni-chan.
- And Now She’s Here.
PERSONALITY
Main personality traits: Saturday is confident, charming, generous, outgoing, and these days always just a little bit angry. But she cares, and she tries; if you’re in pain, and she can reach you, she’ll try to help. It’s not that she’s an especially empathic person, it’s just that as far as she was raised, that’s the thing you do. See a problem, fix that problem. If someone’s being hurt in front of you, if something’s happening that just isn’t right, do something about. Someone has to.
Flaws or negative personality traits: Saturday is an a n g e r e y g i r l. She’s always been angry, but pretended not to be; she had nothing to be angry about, after all. The bad years were behind her. She was safe and loved. Recent events, however, have called that anger to simmer just below the surface, and it does not sit comfortably; it comes out in ways she doesn’t necessarily like, and doesn’t always mean.
She’s also impatient, blunt, bossy, and prefers to react on instinct - that last one being both a flaw and a blessing, depending on the situation. And because she was raised to be a hero, failing in that can really knock her down, in a way few other things will.
Also, she does do things that other people would consider reckless, though in her defense what’s risky for her is set a little farther out than most because of her abilities. That being said, however, Saturday has absolutely no sense of scale and doesn’t like, gut-level acknowledge that there’s any real difference between a ganger lord and a Lord of Chaos. They’re both assholes who need a good kicking, okay?
Self-image: Saturday knows she’s charming, confident and generous. She works very hard to be those things, so she’d fucking better be. Nothing phases her, and that’s all according to plan. Because if she starts freaking out, who’s gonna fix things? It’s all on her, and she can’t complain, because she’s supposed to carry it. That’s what she’s here for, after all. Has to be her. Someone else could get it wrong.
Motivation: Right now this very moment, Saturday wants to go home. And once she does get home, she’s going to eat the biggest BBQ plate from that one joint she loves, sleep for a week, and then go back to school. On account she’s realized the enemies she has to fight in order to protect her people and her patch aren’t the kind you can just kill; corps are worse than hydras for growing new heads. In order to beat them she has to be more than tough and vicious, she has to be smart,.
And she has to beat them back, not just to protect what she loves most, but also to protect the world generally. There’s a bunch of lovecraftian horrors due to bust in any day now, and the only people who know and can do something about it are apparently mostly faffing about protecting themselves and happy to let everyone else get tortured and murdered and soul-eaten as long as they get to survive and rule over what’s left. She ain’t having that. So what if people have been trying for tens of thousands years to beat these things with no success? She hasn’t had a shot at these things.
Beliefs/values: Saturday knows gods and god-like entities are real. She knows Fate as a palpable force. She just doesn’t revere any of these things; they’re spectacular and sublime, like forces of nature, but they’re also kinda, you know, not that relevant and when they become relevant, it’s mostly just a sign that shit is about to get extremely weird.
What she does believe in is the absolute right to self-determination, which for her includes physical and financial safety, because a choice made under duress is no choice at all. There might be an afterlife, but no one can prove it. What we can prove is that here and now, this life, is the life we have, and therefore people should and must be able to live those lives as fully as possible.
Opinions/attitudes: Saturday doesn’t dislike people, but she does pretend to be more fond of them than she actually is as part of her white hat knight errant identity. While she can be eloquent, her natural communication style is more rambling than precise; she expresses her feelings better in actions than words. As a rule she has no prejudices towards any particular type of person, and is willing to accept broad definitions of person under the theory that it’s not worth the risk of getting it wrong and mistreating someone.
She is aware of the anger under her skin, and dislikes it; her worst nightmare is losing control and unleashing her violence against someone who doesn’t deserve it. That would make her a monster, and she won’t be that, not ever. Is this actually something she should be concerned about as opposed to lingering trauma from being kicked into a hell dimension designed to force you to fall to your worst nature to learn you good about humility because the fucking Dweller at the fucking Threshold was blaming THEM for the Bug Shaman’s nonsense? I mean… you be the judge. But it’s a thing that preoccupies her on occasion.
Network Sample
[Saturday sits with one leg crossed over the other, her forearms braced against her shin. Her hair is mussed, her body scraped and bruised, and there’s a really magnificent shiner forming around her left eye. Nonetheless, she is wearing a charming, seemingly effortless grin.]
“If you were on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?”
[The voice from offscreen is perky, upbeat, just this side of squeaky. Saturday leans back and drapes one arm behind the chair, her smile never wavering. She meets the camera’s gaze levelly, her eyes never wavering or glancing to one side or the other.]
“A charged sat phone, a good knife, and a spool of paracord.”
[She doesn’t elaborate, and after a moment the voice continues.]
“What are three positive character traits you don't have?”
[Saturday laughs. It sounds full and rich, and is only slightly undercut by the hard glint in her eyes.]
“Humility, patience, and forbearance.”
[Her voice is subtly dry. The voice continues without missing a beat.]
“On a scale from 1 to 10, rate me as an interviewer!”
[Saturday’s grin curdles for a moment, then flares back full strength. She tilts her head to one side.]
“I’d say about an eight. Damn good job so far, but there’s always room for improvement, hey?”
[The video ends here.]
Prose Sample
Saturday wakes to a hiss, a chemical smell and a snapping electric crackle that has her kicking up from her prone position before she even opens her eyes. ‘Ni-chan’s hilt drops into her hand as she vaults over whoever is standing by her bed and takes half a second to register that she is not in the Lamb’s quarters or Sol’s safehouse, and then she grabs the nearest person she can around the waist and puts her sword to their throat.
“Who the fuck are you?” she spits, too many possibilities in front of her. Metal and tech - but Mangheath’s dead in the water - no, of course, the Governer took it over and they had a set-up like this back in Red Town, the Queen in her hive -
“Where’s Maggie?” The person, if they still are a person, in her arms has gone limp and shivering with terror, and that’s the first thing that really penetrates the cloud of fear and fury.
“Oh god I don’t wanna die - “ they’re saying, and Saturday shakes them a little.
“Who the fuck are you, where am I - “
Then lightning rips through her belly. She staggers, releasing her hostage. Her blade sinks back into her arm as another strikes ripples through her and she falls to the floor. A third. And she’s down, twitching as boots walk into and out of her range of vision. It’s like pins and needles, but everywhere, and when she fights it off enough to grab at one of the ankles passing by they shock her that one last time, and darkness takes her.
She wakes up strapped to a chair, and you know the rest.