OOC InfoPlayer: Jenn
Contact: ![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
victoryfanfareAge Confirmation: Over 18
Other Characters: Ezio Auditore da Firenze
IC InfoCharacter: Travis Touchdown
Canon: No More Heroes
Canon Point: Between
No More Heroes II: Desperate Struggle and
Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes; Travis is living in a camper van in Texas, having left his wife and very young children behind.
Age: 34.
History: Wiki linkCRAU: N/A
About: Travis Touchdown very, very, very,
very much identified with Luke Skywalker when he was a kid. His parents were murdered when he was young, so he was raised by other family members –– kind of fits, right? And hey, he'd go on cool space adventures if he could. Even as he came into adulthood, he was always looking for some sort of
destiny revealed moment that confirmed he was meant for something greater than flipping burgers and mowing laws to pay the rent on his motel room. As it turns out, his hologram is a hot chick buying him drinks, and his adventure is fighting his way up the ranks to be the top assassin in the United Assassins Association. He buys the lightsaber off eBay. Close enough, right? The hot chick promises to put out if he reaches the top. Let the bloodshed begin.
He does get to the top. Along the way, he treats his life life a movie, and his story is going to be the shit of legends. He's sentimental, overly personal with the people he kills for what is essentially sport. He finds out he's been had: the whole ranked assassin thing is a scam. The bitch set him up, charging him astronomical entry fees to kill assassins who thought they were being paid to kill him and pocketing the money. Worst of all, he
does have a long-lost half-sister, Jeane, and while he was arguing with people online about the censorship some violent manga got, she was selling her body to pay for training to be an assassin. He kills her because it's the only way to stop her from killing others. But is he any different? What's his excuse? He never had it as hard as her. He just scribbles her face out in his photographs and lives with it. Star Wars was too PG to ever contain the likes of him. Suddenly it's not all that fun anymore. Anger threatens to consume him, so he walks away, at least for a time.
Travis sees himself as a modern day samurai. (He's very much a white boy.) His personal code is questionable, but he does put a lot of consideration into it. He never lies. He's dutiful and dedicated. He lusts over moeblob anime girls but objects to being hit on by live teenagers; it makes him feel like a pervert. He expects the world to be entirely as sincere as he is and as righteous as possible. It never is, but it could stand to try harder. It could be like an anime, with all the emotionally intense moments where the hero saves the day. When he sees the best in someone, he'll kill for them, or feel honored by killing them. He's put-off by fan worship and is furious when others treat people's lives as a game, but he has a lot of respect for anyone who can own what they are, even if they're complicit in heinous shit. He'll work like a dog for anyone he respects enough to want to learn from, but any teacher he ever had is dead, often to the same life that he's thrown himself headlong into.
Travis has never had much complaint about paying his dues, whether that's in grunt work or training. He sees the daily grind as an irrefutable given, something you just do and do and do and do until you get somewhere, but Travis never gets anywhere. He never climbs any social or corporate ladder, and doesn't even seem interested in it. The only thing he's successfully climbed in his life are the assassin rankings, both because misfits fit in there and the grind –– a body count –– actually amounts to something. In the flashy world of professional killers, Travis had a place where he didn't have to round off his edges to succeed.
And Travis is very much a misfit. He'll call it rugged individualism or his own personal bushido code or whatever, but at the end of the day he's a loser. His sincerity about his interests and his confidence in his lifestyle doesn't change how society sees him, and he knows it. His taste in media is cringe-inducing in a grown man, he sticks out like a sore thumb, he speaks in pop culture references, he's lousy with money, and he carries an intensity that reliably inspires other people to try to put him in his place. He doesn't have many friends. His best friend was the owner of a video store that Travis rented porn DVDs from, but that guy got murdered in revenge for one of Travis's kills. His only romantic relationship scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Sylvia swindled him out of millions, but he's crazy about her, so he isn't concerned about forgiving her. They married and had two kids, but the only thing he could really contribute was his absence. Leaving them means assassins after his title won't target his wife and kids, but he's a deadbeat for it. While Sylvia raises the kids and pays the bills, he's jerking off to magical girl anime on his couch and thinking about what it means to kill people.
At the end of the day, nothing feels as intense or as personal or as all-consuming as his thirst for violence.
Skills and Abilities: While No More Heroes is plausibly a world with superpowers and whatnot, I'd like to take a slightly more grounded (and RP-friendly) approach and interpret the visuals and "special abilities" of the No More Heroes universe as how Travis imagines his own fighting abilities –– dramatic, highly stylized references to video games, anime and film. No literal powers. That said, he's the shit: a legitimately skilled fighter and top-ranked assassin with solid training in wrestling and sword fighting, with remarkable endurance.
He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of anime, manga and misc other pop culture. Hey, being genre-savvy is helpful sometimes. And he can speak Japanese!
Why does your character need to be redeemed? Travis is a hedonist at his core and deeply selfish, and his delusions of grandeur have put him on a path where he has killed countless people, many just for money. He doesn't necessarily enjoy being an assassin, but he still does it anyway. For a guy so into media about superheroes and saving the day, he sure is into the rush of the kill.
His complete lack of motivation towards anything truly selfless is apparent in everything he does: he blows all his money on worthless collectibles and clothing and merchandise, he's walked away from his wife and two children to live in a camper van in the woods and play video games and navel-gaze about people's motivations for killing. He's willingly trapped in a shitty cycle –– he's admired by assassins around him for being able to walk away at all, and he's admired as a badass when he's at work. Most assassins have destroyed their personal lives so badly that there's no reason to quit, but Travis doesn't have that excuse. He waffles because he doesn't want to confront that he's done absolutely nothing with his life but seek glory or revenge. Violence is the only language he has to connect with people, and though he's never believed there to be any meaning in killing, his solution to every problem is murder. He'll even laugh it off. He describes his own approach to grief as "some people fuck at funerals, I cut off heads." He's a shitty dad, a lazy husband, and his arrogance and old desire to be number one wins out.
Travis could do good in the world, if he put his back into something for someone other than himself for once. Everyone he fought on the way to the top warned him that the lifestyle made them broken, and though it took him years to open his eyes to how corrupt the United Assassins Association was, it did shake him when he got there. Travis feels like he's built for this one thing, this one destiny, and he no longer even wants it –– assassins are largely honourless sickos or wayward people resigned to their fates, and he's terrified of dying or losing himself to bloodlust, but it feels inevitable. He was insignificant to the world until he climbed the ranks, and he knows he's never added fuck-all to it. The real "winners" sit on the sidelines profiting off of death, and that certainly isn't him. He could never be one of them. He abhors them.
But he needs help. He's shit on his own. All he can do for now is wait for the day he goes back to bloodshed. It's inevitable; he can't find the exit. Or at least he claims he can't –– he hasn't tried anything but "kill more" or "do nothing."
Charges:Assassination, including killing people just to make money so he could afford ranked matches against other assassins. Killing people for money so you can kill other people for sport! Yikes! Failure to pay child support, most likely some public indecency, public intoxication, disturbing the peace. I doubt this man has ever paid his taxes. He calls women "bitch" with the kind of aggression that makes you narrow your eyes. And you know what, he's probably also cyberbullied someone for having the wrong opinions on Evangelion or something. There's a scale here.
Pick and Choose: What would push your character to "act out" on the ship? Travis will be highly reactive upon arrival, and it may take some time for that to settle. He's a man who reacts to strange and unusual circumstances with the interest of someone playing a new video game level: being in space is going to be a no-brainer and curiosity to him despite being just some fuckhead from California. On the other hand, being imprisoned is going to be an easy excuse to lean on for violence. He won't take easily to being here against his will, much less in an environment that leans cooperative. Merely being on the ship is a potent mix of unreal circumstances and indignities that will probably have him being defiant and crude on principle, and physically aggressive with minimal provocation. It's his nature. He wants a fight. Sorry not sorry, wardens!
Graduation: Well, he could see his kids, to start, and be a better father to them, and a better husband to his wife. Not slaughtering people for petty reasons like getting laid or looking cool would be a perk, too. He's perfectly aware that killing people leads to more and more violence and bloodshed, and innocent people die because of it. A graduated Travis would seek to actually break down the systems that cause suffering, rather than just using it for his own ends and then walking away.
Sample: -
Cool guys don't look back at surrealist hellscapes-
You look like dogshit! BTW I'm going to jack an Avro to escape this place. 
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