(no subject)
[nick / name]: Mary
[personal LJ name]: burnsaway
[other characters currently played]:
Claire Bennet | Heroes | adamantined
Ruby | Supernatural | blackeyedskank
Gregoire de Fronsac | The Brotherhood of the Wolf | aimedifficile
[e-mail]: tiger_lily35@hotmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: marygonemad09
[series]: Cowboy Bebop
[character]: Faye Valentine
[character history / background]: I'm lazy.
[character abilities]: Outside of what constitutes as a normal human being who just so happens to be a massive pain in the ass? Nothing too extensive. Because of her position as a bounty hunter for at least a year, and because she depended so heavily on protecting herself in the years before she joined the Bebop crew, Faye is an expert marksman, and while she was in the City the last time (for the duration of two years) she only got better.
She's a crackshot, has a great eye with a pistol, and favors semi-automatics when the occasion calls for it. She doesn't shy away from hand-to-hand combat either, although she is significantly less skilled in this area than she is with firearms. Faye is strong, and she is fast, and she's exceptionally agile and flexible, and she can beat the ever-loving holy shit out of someone, but if it's her versus unlikely odds, the unlikely odds are usually going to win. That's not to say she wouldn't try or doesn't consider herself capable, but that's more of a personality trait than anything she is capable of.
The only weapon Faye will not fight with is blades. Pocket knifes and things of that nature are fine, but if she is presented with a sword, she will literally spit on it. Call it having issues, but the power behind a blade and its capabilities terrify her, which might be strange for someone so willing to pick up guns, but that's Faye for you.
She's an excellent pilot on top of this, and if she had her monocarrier she would fly it without hesitation. Although she was never as good as Spike was with his ship, Faye was capable of standing her ground when it came to tailing bounties or just straight up dog fighting in the middle of space. This isn't something she was taught, however: most of what Faye has learned over the course of her life, including flying, was self-taught.
During her time alone, she learned to fly, to shoot, and to use her body and her attitude to get what she wanted without ever actually having to take her pants off. She also learned to gamble and con, despite never really being very fortunate when it came to the former, at least when it comes to casinos. Either that, or her luck truly is just that unfortunate.
Faye is also somewhat proficient at really, really pissing people off. She is a loud-mouth and a braggart and she throws her weight around expecting little consequence. Having no issues with getting under the skin of others, Faye regularly and without shame is sarcastic and a loud-mouth, which helps her to get into trouble more often than is good for her. She's most commonly described as being a pain in the ass, actually, but you'd have to go to her ex-partners for that kind of description. Everyone else who would say so about her has more or less already signed their deal and has to put up with her for forever.
[character personality]: Like most characters, like most women, Faye is not at all simple, and what you see is never, ever what you get. On the surface, mainly, she is cold and callous, utterly stony to most people if not downright bitchy. She is defensive and cruel and does not take caution in censoring what comes out of her mouth, for the most part. She delights in being sarcastic, and that is her default setting more often than not. Although she is a complete liar, she isn't afraid of being honest about anything, from the way that shirt looks on your shoulders right down to exactly how weak and pathetic she thinks you are. At the end of the day, she is hard and chilly down to a T, and no matter the situation she refuses to back down, even if that situation ends with her being held at knife or gunpoint.
Of course, a lot of her casual exterior has a lot to do with hiding and protecting who and what she really is, which is an idiotic little girl who is utterly incapable of handling her loneliness. Faye cannot stand to be abandoned. If there is one niche in her character that creates all the circumstances about her and around her, this is it. She will leave people before they have the chance to leave her, and she will push people away with the intention of protecting herself. It is why she is so mean at times, why she doesn't care if people don't like her: if they don't like her then they can't hurt her, if she can't get close to them then they can't leave her. Over the course of her life, Faye's existence has been permeated with loss. It's what defines her. She lost her entire family, lost her memory, lost her trust, lost the only place that she belonged, and lost a lot of men that she loved stupidly.
Males in general are another point of contention as far as Faye is concerned, in that she thinks they are all too stupid to function. Babies, idiots, morons, fuckfaces, whatever the term she uses to describe them - even to their faces - she does mean it. Men are sentimental creatures that cannot let go of their pasts, no matter how hypocritical it makes them. Men are ready at the drop of a hat to abandon, lie, and betray. She has liked many men despite her better judgment, but the idea of loving one ever again terrifies her, which is part of the reason she takes love in any capacity so seriously. Love leaves you open, leaves you vulnerable, and can leave you broken and stuttered above all else.
But a lot of Faye is about love. When she loves you, she loves you. Fiercely loyal, dependable in her fashion, utterly unable to betray anyone, she clings to the ideas that surround love somewhat hopelessly. She even says to Spike and Jet that she's a gypsy who's roaming the stars, looking for love. As much bullshit as that is, sometimes that seems to be the case with her. She definitely has a special approach when it comes to proving that she loves someone, but that's because she is so often nothing but barbs and needles.
There is a soft side to her, however, that she rarely shows, even to those people fortunate enough to see inside her defenses. Being an amnesiac, she clings to a lot of the things that mark her out as herself. Anything about her past makes her sentimental, and when she talks about things like that, it's often somewhat reverently, as if she has that memory on a pedestal or locked away somewhere special. Faye can't remember all of her past, but she can she's very obviously happy to, and it sometimes visibly upsets or at least frustrates her not to be able to remember everything. Sometimes she is quiet, thoughtful, consoling. Sometimes she is sympathetic and reachable, and sometimes she is playful and sweet, nice in her sarcasm and gentle in her ribbing. You just have to know where and when to look, really. And, maybe, to buy her a couple drinks and let her use your lighter first.
IN ADDITION TO ALL OF THIS, Faye is also totally insane, and she will not hesitate remotely to completely fuck you up. If you hurt her, she will do whatever it takes to make sure that you never do it again. Although she gets scared, she doesn't let it show. She's too proud for her own good, and doesn't back down and is so determined to be better than everyone else that giving in just isn't in her nature. She views everything as a challenge, takes everything as a challenge. She is domineering and needs to be in control a lot more than she lets herself be out of it. If she doesn't feel like she's in control, she'll rationalize with herself until she feels like she is again. Necessity for her is in the upper-hand, and when she feels vulnerable or threatened she either closes up and locks down or lashes out and hurts whoever is within range. She doesn't do well with being physically manhandled either, and she isn't the type of woman to just forgive and forget. If you hurt her, she will hurt you back, emotionally or physically, no matter the consequences.
It's also imperative to understand that Faye is an utter spaz. She makes faces, she throws her arms around, she generally freaks out and is dramatic over the smallest things. She yells a lot, punches even more - though never to her full capability unless she really means it or unless... other... things are going on - and while she could generally be described as an insane train wreck, at the very least Faye Valentine is an entertaining train wreck.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Post-series, but she has been in Poly before and I'd like to have her retain her memories.
[journal post]:
[audio : on]
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii~
And you thought you could get rid of me.
[the snick-snick of a lighter catching, then a sharp inhale]
Not that I'm happy to be back in a hellhole like this, but at least there are people out there who owe me a serious round of drinks and after what I've been through I'd say I deserve it. Do you know what it's like on Venus? Sheesh.
[soft, thoughtful pause]
So who's still here anyway? And I swear if any of you idiots cleared out my apartment and ruined my couch in the process, I'm going to shove my foot so far up your ass you'll -
OH MY GOD IT'S THE FUCKING DOG.
[there's a scuffle, a bark, and the audio shuts off ]
[third person / log sample]:
Maybe she was being a little bit excessive, but Faye Valentine didn’t think that buying thirteen cartons of Camels with the woolongs she pulled out of a deceased Spike Spiegel’s jacket pocket was excessive at all, and she didn’t think that it was morbid either, even if the bills had been bloody and warm. In Faye’s opinion, Spike owed her all the blood money that he could conjure up either dead or alive or whatever in-between state he described himself as being in.
The only complaint she had to make about it, the only thing wrong with it that she saw was the fact that she had to wipe some of the red that was still wet off on her pants. Faye didn’t have very many pairs of pants - not that it would surprise anyone - let alone pairs of jeans that weren’t falling apart or hadn’t been stained to hell and back with blood, booze, or motor oil. Or any combination of the three.
So maybe she felt a little more vindictive about using Spike’s money to buy cigarettes than she did morbid. Maybe she was just doing it to cover up the fact that inside she was no longer a wreck. For days and days, thinking about everything had shredded her bones and muscles and lungs to paper ribbons. It had made her ache deep down in parts and places that she didn’t know were still touchable. Her heart had been a disaster for longer than it took to actually wreck it in the first place, and she hated it. She’d been unable to look at Jet, unable to say anything at all other than to ask where Ed and Ein were. Non-committal answers were her only response, so Faye stopped asking and just started smoking instead, which was part of the reason that she bought thirteen cartons of Camels. She smoked a little more frequently than she used to, and the last thing she wanted was to be out of nicotine when Jet finally pulled them out of port that evening. That and Spike really deserved it anyway.
She wasn’t pissed off or upset anymore. If anything, she was numb, had dulled herself down to whatever mediocre pain he caused her to feel that night he’d left the ship. It wasn’t a blind or cold numbness, and she didn’t feel like she did that day she saw her beta tape. It was just indifference. Spike had died, just like he’d wanted, and he’d left her and Jet behind to scrounge around for bounties and try to make a dime with only two people to a team, one with a busted leg and age chasing him and the other with -
Well. She was the other one, obviously.
Faye knew a lot about betrayal, and she knew better to think that this wasn’t betrayal. She’d faced her past and come up short, and in the end she had come back to this stupid situation with these stupid people because she cared about them and she cared about the way that they made her feel. Despite never, ever being willing to say that out loud, Faye couldn’t exactly deny it to herself anymore.
Well. She could, but lying to herself just seemed idiotic when her brain was right there contradicting every point she made against it.
So she considered it betrayal. Jet had gone off with his old partner and had come back. She had fucked off to Singapore and come back. Spike had gone to stare his cold past down and he hadn’t come back, and that was good enough for her. That was as much closure as she needed. The only thing she cared about right now was getting her cigarettes and getting her ship back in working order. That and getting the hell out of Tharsis.
Tharsis smelled too much like blood and disease for even Faye to stomach, and she was sick to death of the constant reminder that people fucked each other over everyday when she was busy doing something idiotic like trying. Or, rather, that someone she and Jet had put their stock in had turned out to amount to nothing at all. That was one other thing that she held onto: no matter what she did or where she went, she’d amount to something. Faye did have a future, after all.