- profile -
the ic
Name: Alejandro Diaz
Age/Birthdate: 30, October 31
Occupation: Zookeeper, Central Park Zoo
Fairytale: Mowgli, Jungle Book.
Ability, if any: None.
Status: Psh. Al has no shame. The fact that he's Mowgli is pretty much common knowledge.
History: Though he was born in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and not a jungle in India, Alejandro did sometimes act as if he’d been raised by wolves. Growing up, he was into everything - cabinets, bags of flour, drawers. He ran his mother, Isobel, absolutely ragged. She couldn’t turn her back on her son for a second; if she did, she was liable to find him undressing himself or playing in the dirt when she turned around. Alejandro was terrible about taking off his clothes - he just plain didn’t like them, and he was prone to peeling off garments in public all the way through to second grade. At that point? Isobel threatened to sew up the fasteners so that he couldn’t get out, and he finally capitulated. He was trouble, plain and simple; a fearless, confident, a charming little boy who would do things even after he’d been told ‘no’ and then smile his way out of punishment afterwards. Alejandro had a good heart, but he did as he wished. It was incredibly frustrating.
The Diaz family was not poor, but they weren’t exceptionally well-off, either. Guillermo worked as a professor at the South Texas College, but the salary wasn’t large and he had a stay-at-home wife and two little boys to support. Alejandro did alright at school - he was outgoing and got along well with the other children. His grades were patchy; when he hated the subject matter, it showed. He made Bs and Cs all through elementary school, though by middle school he’d pulled it up to a B average. It wasn’t that he was stupid; it was that he just didn’t care. Al was nothing if not an individual. You just couldn’t ground him often enough - the lesson never sunk in with him, though his parents used the same punishments on his little brother and they worked perfectly well.
He was a lost cause by high school, far more interested in socializing and girls than in coursework. He was a ringleader; Al was voted Vice President of his class and got involved in a bunch of the social clubs, but he had no real ambition. It was a shame, his teachers said. If he’d just apply himself to his coursework in the same way he applied himself to marching band, his transcripts would look a whole lot better. His parents gave up; they thanked their lucky stars that he wasn’t disrespectful or rude and left it at that. His academic record was mediocre, but it wasn’t as if the family had the money to send him away to a big, expensive school anyway. Upon graduation, Al enrolled in the South Texas College, majored in accounting, and did a semester or two. Then he dropped out.
Alejandro was restless. He didn’t know what he was missing, but he was missing something. He felt caged. Trapped. College was a prison, and south Texas seemed like a big dead end. So, he bought an old Crown Vic, said goodbye to his family, and took off for Houston. Hey. It seemed as good a place as any. He was nineteen.
The next six months were spent waiting tables and living in a tiny apartment. Whatever he was looking for? That wasn’t it. So, he packed up and moved again, this time west. After a series of equally unfulfilling jobs, each a little further from home, Alejandro landed in Las Vegas. He tended bar for a little while, made a few friends, and eventually managed to land a position at the Mirage’s Dolphin Habitat. That was a good job; it was mostly physical labor, but Al was okay with that because he got to see the animals every day. Not train them; he didn’t have any background in animal training, but that was okay. He was enjoying himself for the first time since high school.
He was 21 when he realized he was a Tale; he’d been at his job for about three months and he’d been having weird dreams. He blamed it on the liquor; he’d been partying pretty hard since he’d reached the legal drinking age. So, imagine his surprise when a woman showed up and told him that he was not, in fact, the victim of too much booze. He really was Mowgli and he really was a part of a larger community of fairy tales. She handed over the Compendium, told him about the Pentamerone, and went on her way.
She probably wasn’t expecting him to actually move in, but Alejandro pulled up two weeks later in his Crown Vic. He wanted to give college another try, he said. Get a degree under his belt, become an actual animal keeper instead of a glorified stable boy. He didn’t have anyplace to live and his savings were meager, so the Librarians set him up with a place to sleep and some odd jobs to do to in trade for room and board. Al was as good as his word; he started school and got a job at a clothing shop in SoHo. He became involved with the Tale community (mostly in the ‘hey, let’s meet for drinks’ sense and not the ‘responsible’ sense, alas). And, after a few years, he got out of school.
It was job-hunting time. Al considered the Bronx Zoo, but when he discovered that you couldn’t actually go in with the animals, he changed goals a little. He decided he wanted to work at the Central Park Zoo in the Tisch Children’s Zoo area, where the animals were substantially less dangerous and therefore more accessible. Plus, he could show young children the wonders of live animals and he’d be surrounded by trees all the time. Could it get better?
He continued to live at the Pentamerone, though there were doubtless people who wished he’d just move out. He’s been known to stuff take-out into the refrigerator and promptly forget about it for a week and a half. He’s also prone to wandering around in naught but his undies when he thinks everyone else has gone to bed. (Some things? Just don’t change.) But he pays his dues and picks up groceries on occasion, so he’s pretty sure he’ll be forgiven. Pretty sure.
Personality: ‘Incorrigible’ might also be a good word to describe Alejandro; as far as he’s concerned, he’s Man. Boss of the forest, baby, and he’s going to do what he wants. The only thing that keeps him from being a total cocky jerk is that he actually cares how other people feel. He knows better than to run around bragging or putting down others - his parents raised him better than that. They did not, however, manage to instill in him a sense of shame. Al feels no embarrassment about most things that people tend to get antsy about - his body? Nah. Wearing weird clothes? Nah. Speaking his mind, eating adventurous foods, being wrong? No, no, no. It’s incredibly hard to embarrass him, so he’s willing to try almost anything. How bad could it really be?
Alejandro wants to do what he wants to do; it’s very difficult to talk him down once he’s made up his mind. He’s determined and fearless and he doesn’t like to back off. It doesn’t sit well with him; he may not be Mowgli anymore, not entirely, but he still likes to feel like he’s in control of things. There’s still that nagging sense that, should you ever show weakness, the Pack will replace you in a second.
Though he doesn’t intend to be inconsiderate, it often happens by accident. Alejandro means well, but it doesn’t always occur to him that it might be impolite to eat some of the unmarked jar of peanut butter or to take the last Coke from the fridge. If it isn’t clearly marked with a name, he assumes it’s free for consumption. Often, he is wrong. Unfortunately, experience hasn’t taught him to ask first, so he keeps making the same mistakes. Rudeness tends to be of that variety; trombone practice during prime study time, varying states of undress at late-night hours, forgotten takeout in the fridge. He’s a little thoughtless, but he’ll stop doing whatever is bothering people if called on it.
Alejandro likes people. He’s a social kind of guy, which is why he was reluctant to move out of the Pentamerone. He likes to be in the heart of things, and he’ll cope with having a small room if it means he’s in the same building as a lot of the other Tales.
Played-By: Gael Garcia Bernal.
the obligatory bit
As the first incarnation of Mowgli, Alejandro is probably as close to the original as any version is likely to get. He’s fearless and determined. He’s great with animals. He doesn’t like to wear clothes and sheds them whenever he can possibly get away with it. He’s been socialized a little out of necessity; after all, he grew up with a real mother and father this time around, but he still has a bit of wildness about him. He gets restless easily. He needs the out-of-doors and he needs to feel like he’s free to do as he wishes.
He has an almost perfect firsthand memory of his tale - it was spotty when he was younger, but as he’s aged the gaps have filled in and he really remembers being the boy from the Jungle Book. It’s a little weird, but he goes with it; after all, it introduced him to the other Tales, and on the whole he likes the community.