Entranceway App
Name: Kristi
LJ: bashipforever
E-Mail: writer@allengames.com
IM: rageiscute
Character Name: Tim Riggins
Series: Friday Night Lights
Timeline: 4X05
Canon Resource Link: http://www.fnlwiki.com/index.php?title=Tim_Riggins
*This page is actually incomplete but it’s the most complete one out there. It gives you an idea of him through the second season but not much into the third.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Riggins
Character Background:
Tim Riggins is a lifetime resident of Dillon, Texas. He is very, very good at three things: football, drinking and women. His parents are alcoholics. His father left when Tim was twelve and his mother left long before that. Tim was left in the care of his older brother, Billy who managed as best he could. Tim started playing football in the Pop Warner league at a young age. He continued playing football all through high school as Dillon High’s fullback, #33. Tim often shows up to football practice drunk or hungover. He always plays the games buzzed. Tim’s school experience can best be described as stereotypical Texas Football Player. He starts each day hung over, chugs Gatorade to get through the day, collects all the homework the rally girls did for him and turns it in. This is on the days that he actually wakes up to go to school. He is borderline (and possibly completely) illiterate.
Tim’s best friend is Jason Street, the quarterback. He and Street have been friends since their Pop Warner days. When Jason is paralyzed in a game Tim loads himself up with undeserved guilt because he feels as if he should have been able to intercept the tackle that left Street paralyzed. One of the assistant coaches point out that Tim was all the way across the field and no one could have intercepted that tackle. It doesn’t do much to alleviate Tim’s guilt. In the wake of Jason’s accident, Tim begins an affair with Jason’s girlfriend, Lyla. During this time, Tim’s girlfriend, Tyra breaks up with him (understandably so).
The affair with Lyla is a disaster. Jason finds out and yet somehow he and Riggins remain friends. After the affair with Lyla, Tim bounces into an affair with a 33 year old woman named Jackie. She has a seven year old son named Bo who worships Tim. In fact, 75% of Jackie’s appeal is Bo. Tim loves kids and despite some of his more unorthodox ways of dealing with them, he’s very good with kids. At one point during the affair with Jackie, Tim is ready to move in with her and play husband/father. It’s actually something he’s very serious about. In the end, Jackie breaks things off with Tim because he’s too young (16) for her. Tim actually takes this pretty hard, mostly because of Bo. In Tim’s Sophomore year, the Dillon Panthers go to the state championships and they win.
Tim spends the summer trying to party away any feelings he may have had about Bo or Jackie. He gets help from sisters and every other girl/woman in Dillon that will have him, which are quite a few. One of the other Panthers coins a phrase that will stick “Sometimes you just have to ask yourself WWRD-What would Riggins do?” Tim’s brother, Billy dates Jackie and spurs a fight between him and Tim that results in Tim moving out. He ends up with a guy known only as ‘Ferret Guy’. The deal is he takes care of the ferrets and he’s allowed to live with the guy. Tim finds out that the guy makes and sells meth. Shortly after this, ‘Ferret Guy’ wakes Tim up by shoving a loaded rifle into his chest. Tim’s dumb but as he’s fond of saying he’s not retarded. He grabs his boots, says he’s running to the store for more liquor and gets the hell out of there. Tim ends up living with Coach Taylor, his football coach, for a little while. He gets kicked out when he brings home Coach’s daughter, Julie, drunk. Coach catches him tucking Julie into bed and Tim is content to let Coach think the worse even though it gets him kicked out of the house. The truth is Tim intercepted Julie at a party while a guy was trying to take advantage of her. He scared the guy off and took Julie home. He behaved perfectly gentlemanly and innocently.
When Tim is kicked out of Coach’s place, he’s got no choice but to return to living with Billy. By this point, Billy has broken things off with Jackie and she has moved away. The Panthers don’t make it to state this year.
In his senior year, Tim resumes his relationship with Lyla. On one hand, Lyla is good for him. She pushes Tim to do more with his life. On the other hand, she’s incredibly bad for him. She tries to turn him into something he’s not. She had a dream of what her life would be like with Jason Street (they’d go to college together, he’d play football in college and then in the pros) and honestly, she’s trying to shove Tim into that space left by Jason. During this year, Jason moves to New York City. Tim takes this hard because he sort of always thought he and Jason were going to be together. By the end of the year, Tim actually manages to eek a football scholarship out of a small college. He’s going for the wrong reasons (Lyla & Billy). Billy gets married and is set to become a father. Billy opens a mechanic shop, the Panthers lose State and Tim heads off to college.
College turns out to be harder than Tim thought it would be. They don’t have rally girls to do his homework for him. The professors use bigger words and more difficult material and the football coaches aren’t at all like Coach Taylor. He makes the decision to return to Dillon, tossing his school books out the window as he drives down the road. Back in Dillon, he moves in with Billy and his new wife, Mandy, for a short time. He works at the mechanic’s shop with Billy. Eventually Mandy and Billy kick him out. After a night or two sleeping where ever he can, he moves into a trailer in an acquaintance’s back yard. (Okay so she was a Cougar and a one night stand that actually stays a one night stand). He ends up driving her daughter (a sixteen year old with a crush on him) around a great deal. He also helps Coach Taylor with his new team, East Dillon High. Life has changed in Dillon and Tim’s having to deal with the fact that he’s not a rockstar in Dillon anymore. He’s ‘the guy who used to be Tim Riggins’.
Tim is cocky about the things he knows he’s good at/with but he’s also pretty aware of his flaws. He’s not bright (although he’s smarter than he gives himself credit for) and he knows his morals are off. He’s aware he comes off as the bad boy and he’s more comfortable with that image than he is with the truth. He’s not ever going to be the guy you take home to Mom but he’s got his own code of honor that he upholds even when it hurts him. He rebels against authority but once his respect is gained, he’ll do just about anything for you. It’s the only way Coach gets him to do anything.
Abilites/Special Powers: He has more touchdowns than any other fullback ever? He functions incredibly well drunk? He loses his pants on a regular basis?
No seriously, Tim has no special powers. He’s just a kind of dumb, functioning alcoholic, ex-football player. He does know how to do things like hunt with a shot gun (drunk) and he’s actually a really excellent mechanic, almost freaking gifted but not quite (cue Tim giving a cocky little grin and saying he’s just good with his hands). He also plays golf.
Third-Person Sample:
He’d been to eight houses. Eight houses with people he didn’t know living in them. Three of them had blondes, but not the blonde he was looking for. The other five varied from brunettes to redheads to single men. This was the ninth house and he was pretty sure he recognized the silver Camry in the driveway. That could be just out right frustration and sheer hope that he can put an end to this torment and find those damn pants. Of course he could give up on the pants but he still liked those pants a lot.
He pressed the doorbell and rocked back on the heels of his cowboy boots as he peered through the frosted glass panes. “Fuckin’ finally,” he muttered when he recognized the tall blonde walking to the door. She looked surprised when she swung the door open, speechless for a moment. She looked over her shoulder and back at Tim.
“Tim Riggins,” she started.
“Yeah,” he grinned, ducking his head. “Wasn’t sure if you’d remember me.” She was a little older than he remembered, probably her late twenties, maybe early thirties.
“N-no, I-I remember,” she assured him, twisting one hand on the doorknob. She hadn’t stepped all the way outside yet, still clinging to the door like she was half afraid to let go.
“Uhm…yeah,” he stalled, raking a hand through his hair and scuffing the toe of his boot across the porch. “Uhm…you know those pants I let you borrow…you happen to have them. I mean-I’d like to have ‘em back.”
Her face went pale and her eyes went wide. She cleared her throat and nodded quickly. “Yeah…I’ll-just a minute.”
She turned and fled like he’d threatened her bodily harm instead of asking about a pair of pants. Tim was left standing on the porch, confused as all hell and trying to figure out what was going on. She returned a few minutes later, the door clicking shut behind her as she stepped all the way out onto the porch. She had the jeans in her hands. They’d been washed and more neatly folded then he’d ever managed.
“I’ll talk to you later,” she said in a rush of words. She was just reaching her hand back to turn the door knob and duck inside when the door opened and a man a few years older than her stepped out onto the porch.
“There a problem here?” he asked.
Tim was still confused as all hell but he was figuring it out fast. “No, Sir,” he answered.
The man looked a little confused and the woman (he still didn’t know her name) looked like she wanted to shrink into the porch. Tim took a step back, figuring how fast he could run down the sidewalk where he’d parked the truck, when he saw the man’s face go from confused to infuriated.
“This him, Susan?”
Susan never answered, at least not that Tim saw but then the only thing he saw was the man’s fist coming down toward his face. Tim stumbled but he held his ground, fists curling at his side. He didn’t throw a punch and he took the next one. Pain shot through his cheekbone then through his eye. He heard Susan yelling and looked up at the guy. His vision was blurry red but he could see she was trying to pull him back. He took another hit to the face and he went down to the ground. There was a sharp kick to his ribs and he curled up on himself involuntarily. There was another sharp kick that caught him in the shoulder and then it all stopped. He heard the door slam shut and Susan crouched down next to him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered then stood up and ducked into the house.
It took Tim a few minutes to stand up, grab the jeans lying next to him and drag himself down the sidewalk to his truck. Everything hurt so damn much. He started the truck and just drove, not surprised when he ended up at Tyra’s house. She answered the door pretty quickly, the horror on her face letting him know just how bad he looked.
“Damn, Tim…who the hell ran over your face?”
In answer he held up his pants. Tyra rolled her eyes and stepped back.
“That don’t explain you lookin’ like you went a few rounds with Charlie’s entire bar,” she told him as he stepped over the threshold.
“She was married. Her husband was home,” Tim slurred between split lips.
“And you didn’t fight back?”
“It was her husband,” he stressed. Blood dripped down his cheek, either off his eye or his cheekbone and landed in a fat drip on the jeans. That was when he noticed that for some damn reason that night, he’d felt the need to sign the pants. Right across the ass. In black marker. Tim Riggins #33.
No wonder the husband had been pissed off.
First-Person Sample:
[There’s a man, kid really, sprawled out on the grass. He’s got torn blue jeans, a half buttoned plaid shirt and a pair of cowboy boots on. He sits up with a groan and looks around, raking a head through his long hair.]
Seven!
[He winces then looks confused because he doesn’t have a hangover…in fact he still feels pretty drunk. He rolls to his feet, glancing around.]
What the hell?
[He’s damn sure the last thing he remembers was drinking on the Panther’s field then he’d had the bright idea of breaking into the funeral home so Seven could see his dad’s body. This wasn’t the Panther’s field and it sure as hell weren’t the funeral home. Fact, near as he could tell this wasn’t anywhere close to Dillon, Texas]
Seven…we gotta quit drinkin’ like this…