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User Name/Nick: Pel
User DW:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pitseleh
E-mail: capequod@gmail.com
Other Characters: N/a
Character Name: Takeshi Kovacs
Series: Altered Carbon (Netflix Series)
Age: 284
From When?: s1e6, when he nearly dies in fightdrome.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate! Kovacs is a multiple murderer who feels little remorse for the lives he's taken. He is angry, withdrawn, antisocial, and nihilistic. He doesn't seem to value life at all, his or others. Kovacs has been a soldier for literal centuries, seen horrific death and torture, been tortured and killed in return, and clings to his soldier's training as a way to solidly Not Deal With Any Of It. All this while pushing everyone who might help him away in the cruelest, most childish ways possible. In one example, he tries to determine how much the body he's wearing matters to another person by nearly slitting his own throat. His nihilistic outlook veers frequently into the sociopathic, with little regard for anyone's feelings. At one point he gets into an argument with a literal child, telling them they should get rid of all their friends before they turn on them. He's not having a good time.
Arrival: Moment of death.
Abilities/Powers: Kovach is an Envoy, which means he's one of the best trained soldiers in the galaxy. Advanced reflexes, pattern recognition, an excellent ability to read people, skills with guns and knives and all the ways anything can become a weapon, speed and stealth, total recall, incredibly high pain tolerance... he's just Like That.
However, in the show, these innate abilities are aided with Neurochem, a substance that allows, essentially, for the body to respond much faster to the orders of the brain. He will not have this on the Barge, and because of this, he'll be on a more human level of skill. He'll still be an incredibly talented fighter, because that training is literally a part of who he is, but he won't have a chemical advantage. Above average, but no longer super-human. This also means his resistance to drugs, poisons, and alcohol, is baseline normal.
Also, this didn't really fit anywhere else, but: He speaks Japanese, Polish, Serbian, and English fluently, with a smattering of Arabic. He can understand Spanish but can't speak it.
Personality: If Takeshi Kovacs seems like an asshole, it's because he is. More than willing to bite the hand that feeds, Kovacs protects himself with violence and sarcasm and just plain cruelty. He will be casually cruel to those he encounters, regardless of whether they do him any wrong. In part, he's trying to ward them away from a person (himself) who he finds reprehensible. In another sense, he likes the power of being cruel. But really? He sees no point in kindness. We're all going to die screaming, or slouched over in poverty, or getting away with heinous crimes. What's the point of kindness.
Kovacs' deeply nihilistic outlook is born of the violence and loss he's encountered and participated in. He's been a soldier and a revolutionary, and he frequently uses that training to get through the day. He shuts off empathy because it doesn't help him, and it's been shut off so long it's a little permanently broken. Even people he considers friends, he can be very sharp with.
All of this is due to literal centuries of trauma. As a CTAC soldier, he was deployed into combat zones, killed, and spun up again with the futuristic technologies of his world. It was the same with his career as a rebel against CTAC and the government it held up. Yet this time, he was the soul survivor, and carries with that all the guilt and the loss of a survivor who very much wants to die.
He doesn't value his life. He doesn't value himself, his well-being, his shame, his honor. He considers himself scum, and paradoxically, that makes it easier to treat others poorly. No one is inherently above him-- he's too prideful for that-- so that just means they're all scum in this together. He automatically assumes everyone's motives are as venal and mercenary as his, which doesn't paint a very nice picture of the world.
That said, he is capable of respect. The bitterest of broken pessimists were once optimists, and Kovacs carries that little stupid seed of hope within his heart still. If someone truly impresses him-- by sticking by him, by helping others for altruistic reasons, for holding their own, by refusing to be corrupted by more base impulses-- he may begin to care for that person genuinely.
And in that case, all of Kovacs' soldier training kicks into high gear. While he's no hovering mother hen, if someone he actually respects needs help, he's there without question. He will support them however they need.
Due to the fact that Kovacs is showing up in a body he has no strong feelings toward, that looks nothing like the body he was born in (he is of Asian and Slavic descent, and prefers to be sleeved into bodies that look east Asian), he has very little regard for shame or decency. Who cares if someone sees him naked? It's not his body. Who cares if he's harmed or scarred? Not his body. Because of this, and because Kovacs' incredibly long life, he's incredibly difficult to shame or shake. He objects to punishment because he often believes whoever is punishing is doing it because it amuses them as an egoist or a masochist, not because punishment actually hurts him. Causing him distress is difficult, but not impossible-- there is definitely shit he hates, and he does love his privacy and the finer things in life. Yet taking those things away for a good reason that makes sense to Kovacs? Fine. Taking things away from him in a way that seems like you're just doing it to get your punishment jollies? Kovacs will retaliate in increasingly destructive ways.
For everything he's been through and done, Kovacs still has the capacity to love. He is driven by nostalgia, and particularly sensitive to that emotion in others. He has been crushed under the heel of the passage of time, and knows what it does to people. As far as Kovacs is concerned, everyone he grew up with, cared about, worked for, knew, on his home planet? Dead, gone, forgotten.
He's also just someone who wants to feel love, even if he's suspicious when it's expressed toward him (please have better taste). He wants to love someone, to hold them up, help and protect them, because it gives his life a meaning beyond killing. Yet, as with everything that brings him more than superficial joy, he is apt to self-sabotage and wreck his chances simply for the sake of it.
Takeshi Kovacs is a nihilist, but he personally sees himself as a walking bomb. Everyone should, in his opinion, stay away from him. He's sure he can't be fixed, that the damage to his mind and personality is irreparable, but the effort he puts forth to try and help those who he deems worthy reveals that for what it is: a lie Kovacs tells himself to feel better about the deep loneliness at his core.
Barge Reactions: Kovach has seen a lot of truly weird shit in his life, so I doubt anything on the Barge will truly shock him. Many things may make him angry-- he reacts poorly to anything he registers as injustice-- but it really depends on the specific scenario on whether he'll do anything about it. He will be angry and rude to everyone, but that's his baseline until deeper CR is achieved.
He will find lighter fare funny (children's cartoons, more bizarre & less grounded canons) and make fun of it as he sees fit; he is judgmental. But he won't fail to believe something exists, because what do these people gain from lying?
His attitude will be very 'same shit, different dimension'.
Path to Redemption: Kovach relates poorly to authority, and interprets anyone too quick to punish as a sadist, or too quick to sympathize as a rube. He's done horrible things and he knows that. What he needs is someone willing to take it slow, and show their own nobility and good aims. Kovacs is not loyal to anyone who hasn't in turn earned his loyalty, and proving that through good judgement, genuine kindness, and a refusal to ignore empathy because it's convenient is a good start.
That said, don't be a pushover. Don't be what Kovacs considers a rube. Don't let people walk all over you, especially Kovacs. If he gives you shit, and you roll over and take it, he'll never respect you.
Gaining his loyalty is just the start, though. Kovacs needs to be deprogrammed-- he's been in two military organizations, built entirely around kill counts and death, and he needs to be removed from an environment of violence. He has that soldier's sickness that allows him to see anyone as the 'bad guy', unworthy of empathy, easily and swiftly killed with no remorse. He relies on that, but it just excuses worse behavior, not limited to screaming at the grieving and arguing with actual children, not to mention, uh, wanton murder.
Kovacs' default mental pattern when encountering something he finds 'evil' is to be disgusted, then shrug it off because 'that's how the world is'. It's the shrugging it off part that needs to be stopped. He needs to be forced to believe everyone is worth empathy, and that killing is not only wrong, but causes him legitimate psychic harm, and he doesn't deserve that either.
A good second step, after gaining Kovacs' rare respect, is to give him space to talk about his experiences. This may not go well the first or even fifth time, but he needs to clear the air with himself, and allow himself that sense of closure. He's never had any.
In order for Kovacs to value others, he paradoxically needs to value himself. It is easy to kill when you think your life is worthless. It's easy to hurt when you think you deserve the same. After a point, all the pain and the loss just get dumped into an emotionally numbing pit. The only way to leave is to value yourself as more than means to an end, a solider, a killer, a revolutionary.
Kovacs does not see himself as a person, and so it's easy to dehumanize someone for the kill. A Warden's primary duty with Kovacs will be getting him to grieve, for what he's done, what he's lost, so he can finally move on and remake himself.
History: Bloop.
Sample Journal Entry: culture is like a smog. to live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.
how have you been contaminated?
i'm not big on this grand discussion bullshit, but it's good to drop a bomb in the water and see what rises to the top. that's how fishing works, right? just kill everything in the mud.
how has this place changed you? has it, actually? Does this bullshit work
convince me
or don't
Sample RP:
When he opens his eyes, an anger bubbles up in him like an awakening volcano. He knows what a torture clinic looks like; he's worked in them, he's shut them down. Predictably, he's played both sides.
This is not one.
Blood's still hot in his mouth. It hasn't been much time, but enough to postpone his revenge. He remembers heat, horrible fire, chains, things crawling through him, he wants death, he wants blood, he wants the calming feeling of rage taking over. His decisions are so gentle and neat, when he's angry. Everything slides into place. Focus.
A library. Sedate music. It looks like a meth's-- methuselah's, immortal's-- idea of a good time. The anger continues to surge. Fuck those deathless angels, those monsters of time, those leeches on the back of beauty. He could come up with more artful descriptions, but by this point he's up and pulling books off shelves. In this process, he is mildly surprised he has all his fingernails-- Dimi had taken great enjoyment ripping those the fuck out in the simulation. But, of course, it was a simulation. The pain was real. The physical reality didn't transfer over, or he wouldn't have a fucking head.
He allows him one second to have a tantrum. For one moment, rage is all he's working with. Destroying to destroy. It's not even people under his hands. Just priceless fucking artifacts. Paper books?
What had Bancroft said? Oh, fuck what Bancroft said. Fuck Bancroft. Fuck Dimi. Fuck all of them.
Quell whispers in his ear. Take what is offered and that must sometimes be enough.
His frantic motions slow. He's in a library, and nobody's holding a gun to his head. They are staring, but genuinely fuck them. His smile is grim and feral, perfected over hundreds of sleeves-- he knows exactly what muscles to pull, to press.
He picks up another book from the shelf, and genuinely skims over it. A storybook, not a history, not what he needs. But even with the rage bubbling in him, he's allowed himself his one senseless second of indulgence. Now all violence must be useful to him.
People are still staring, trying to figure out what he is. That's easy. Why not show them?
"Anybody got a book," he says, "on pulling out fingernails?"
User DW:
pitselehE-mail: capequod@gmail.com
Other Characters: N/a
Character Name: Takeshi Kovacs
Series: Altered Carbon (Netflix Series)
Age: 284
From When?: s1e6, when he nearly dies in fightdrome.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate! Kovacs is a multiple murderer who feels little remorse for the lives he's taken. He is angry, withdrawn, antisocial, and nihilistic. He doesn't seem to value life at all, his or others. Kovacs has been a soldier for literal centuries, seen horrific death and torture, been tortured and killed in return, and clings to his soldier's training as a way to solidly Not Deal With Any Of It. All this while pushing everyone who might help him away in the cruelest, most childish ways possible. In one example, he tries to determine how much the body he's wearing matters to another person by nearly slitting his own throat. His nihilistic outlook veers frequently into the sociopathic, with little regard for anyone's feelings. At one point he gets into an argument with a literal child, telling them they should get rid of all their friends before they turn on them. He's not having a good time.
Arrival: Moment of death.
Abilities/Powers: Kovach is an Envoy, which means he's one of the best trained soldiers in the galaxy. Advanced reflexes, pattern recognition, an excellent ability to read people, skills with guns and knives and all the ways anything can become a weapon, speed and stealth, total recall, incredibly high pain tolerance... he's just Like That.
However, in the show, these innate abilities are aided with Neurochem, a substance that allows, essentially, for the body to respond much faster to the orders of the brain. He will not have this on the Barge, and because of this, he'll be on a more human level of skill. He'll still be an incredibly talented fighter, because that training is literally a part of who he is, but he won't have a chemical advantage. Above average, but no longer super-human. This also means his resistance to drugs, poisons, and alcohol, is baseline normal.
Also, this didn't really fit anywhere else, but: He speaks Japanese, Polish, Serbian, and English fluently, with a smattering of Arabic. He can understand Spanish but can't speak it.
Personality: If Takeshi Kovacs seems like an asshole, it's because he is. More than willing to bite the hand that feeds, Kovacs protects himself with violence and sarcasm and just plain cruelty. He will be casually cruel to those he encounters, regardless of whether they do him any wrong. In part, he's trying to ward them away from a person (himself) who he finds reprehensible. In another sense, he likes the power of being cruel. But really? He sees no point in kindness. We're all going to die screaming, or slouched over in poverty, or getting away with heinous crimes. What's the point of kindness.
Kovacs' deeply nihilistic outlook is born of the violence and loss he's encountered and participated in. He's been a soldier and a revolutionary, and he frequently uses that training to get through the day. He shuts off empathy because it doesn't help him, and it's been shut off so long it's a little permanently broken. Even people he considers friends, he can be very sharp with.
All of this is due to literal centuries of trauma. As a CTAC soldier, he was deployed into combat zones, killed, and spun up again with the futuristic technologies of his world. It was the same with his career as a rebel against CTAC and the government it held up. Yet this time, he was the soul survivor, and carries with that all the guilt and the loss of a survivor who very much wants to die.
He doesn't value his life. He doesn't value himself, his well-being, his shame, his honor. He considers himself scum, and paradoxically, that makes it easier to treat others poorly. No one is inherently above him-- he's too prideful for that-- so that just means they're all scum in this together. He automatically assumes everyone's motives are as venal and mercenary as his, which doesn't paint a very nice picture of the world.
That said, he is capable of respect. The bitterest of broken pessimists were once optimists, and Kovacs carries that little stupid seed of hope within his heart still. If someone truly impresses him-- by sticking by him, by helping others for altruistic reasons, for holding their own, by refusing to be corrupted by more base impulses-- he may begin to care for that person genuinely.
And in that case, all of Kovacs' soldier training kicks into high gear. While he's no hovering mother hen, if someone he actually respects needs help, he's there without question. He will support them however they need.
Due to the fact that Kovacs is showing up in a body he has no strong feelings toward, that looks nothing like the body he was born in (he is of Asian and Slavic descent, and prefers to be sleeved into bodies that look east Asian), he has very little regard for shame or decency. Who cares if someone sees him naked? It's not his body. Who cares if he's harmed or scarred? Not his body. Because of this, and because Kovacs' incredibly long life, he's incredibly difficult to shame or shake. He objects to punishment because he often believes whoever is punishing is doing it because it amuses them as an egoist or a masochist, not because punishment actually hurts him. Causing him distress is difficult, but not impossible-- there is definitely shit he hates, and he does love his privacy and the finer things in life. Yet taking those things away for a good reason that makes sense to Kovacs? Fine. Taking things away from him in a way that seems like you're just doing it to get your punishment jollies? Kovacs will retaliate in increasingly destructive ways.
For everything he's been through and done, Kovacs still has the capacity to love. He is driven by nostalgia, and particularly sensitive to that emotion in others. He has been crushed under the heel of the passage of time, and knows what it does to people. As far as Kovacs is concerned, everyone he grew up with, cared about, worked for, knew, on his home planet? Dead, gone, forgotten.
He's also just someone who wants to feel love, even if he's suspicious when it's expressed toward him (please have better taste). He wants to love someone, to hold them up, help and protect them, because it gives his life a meaning beyond killing. Yet, as with everything that brings him more than superficial joy, he is apt to self-sabotage and wreck his chances simply for the sake of it.
Takeshi Kovacs is a nihilist, but he personally sees himself as a walking bomb. Everyone should, in his opinion, stay away from him. He's sure he can't be fixed, that the damage to his mind and personality is irreparable, but the effort he puts forth to try and help those who he deems worthy reveals that for what it is: a lie Kovacs tells himself to feel better about the deep loneliness at his core.
Barge Reactions: Kovach has seen a lot of truly weird shit in his life, so I doubt anything on the Barge will truly shock him. Many things may make him angry-- he reacts poorly to anything he registers as injustice-- but it really depends on the specific scenario on whether he'll do anything about it. He will be angry and rude to everyone, but that's his baseline until deeper CR is achieved.
He will find lighter fare funny (children's cartoons, more bizarre & less grounded canons) and make fun of it as he sees fit; he is judgmental. But he won't fail to believe something exists, because what do these people gain from lying?
His attitude will be very 'same shit, different dimension'.
Path to Redemption: Kovach relates poorly to authority, and interprets anyone too quick to punish as a sadist, or too quick to sympathize as a rube. He's done horrible things and he knows that. What he needs is someone willing to take it slow, and show their own nobility and good aims. Kovacs is not loyal to anyone who hasn't in turn earned his loyalty, and proving that through good judgement, genuine kindness, and a refusal to ignore empathy because it's convenient is a good start.
That said, don't be a pushover. Don't be what Kovacs considers a rube. Don't let people walk all over you, especially Kovacs. If he gives you shit, and you roll over and take it, he'll never respect you.
Gaining his loyalty is just the start, though. Kovacs needs to be deprogrammed-- he's been in two military organizations, built entirely around kill counts and death, and he needs to be removed from an environment of violence. He has that soldier's sickness that allows him to see anyone as the 'bad guy', unworthy of empathy, easily and swiftly killed with no remorse. He relies on that, but it just excuses worse behavior, not limited to screaming at the grieving and arguing with actual children, not to mention, uh, wanton murder.
Kovacs' default mental pattern when encountering something he finds 'evil' is to be disgusted, then shrug it off because 'that's how the world is'. It's the shrugging it off part that needs to be stopped. He needs to be forced to believe everyone is worth empathy, and that killing is not only wrong, but causes him legitimate psychic harm, and he doesn't deserve that either.
A good second step, after gaining Kovacs' rare respect, is to give him space to talk about his experiences. This may not go well the first or even fifth time, but he needs to clear the air with himself, and allow himself that sense of closure. He's never had any.
In order for Kovacs to value others, he paradoxically needs to value himself. It is easy to kill when you think your life is worthless. It's easy to hurt when you think you deserve the same. After a point, all the pain and the loss just get dumped into an emotionally numbing pit. The only way to leave is to value yourself as more than means to an end, a solider, a killer, a revolutionary.
Kovacs does not see himself as a person, and so it's easy to dehumanize someone for the kill. A Warden's primary duty with Kovacs will be getting him to grieve, for what he's done, what he's lost, so he can finally move on and remake himself.
History: Bloop.
Sample Journal Entry: culture is like a smog. to live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.
how have you been contaminated?
i'm not big on this grand discussion bullshit, but it's good to drop a bomb in the water and see what rises to the top. that's how fishing works, right? just kill everything in the mud.
how has this place changed you? has it, actually? Does this bullshit work
convince me
or don't
Sample RP:
When he opens his eyes, an anger bubbles up in him like an awakening volcano. He knows what a torture clinic looks like; he's worked in them, he's shut them down. Predictably, he's played both sides.
This is not one.
Blood's still hot in his mouth. It hasn't been much time, but enough to postpone his revenge. He remembers heat, horrible fire, chains, things crawling through him, he wants death, he wants blood, he wants the calming feeling of rage taking over. His decisions are so gentle and neat, when he's angry. Everything slides into place. Focus.
A library. Sedate music. It looks like a meth's-- methuselah's, immortal's-- idea of a good time. The anger continues to surge. Fuck those deathless angels, those monsters of time, those leeches on the back of beauty. He could come up with more artful descriptions, but by this point he's up and pulling books off shelves. In this process, he is mildly surprised he has all his fingernails-- Dimi had taken great enjoyment ripping those the fuck out in the simulation. But, of course, it was a simulation. The pain was real. The physical reality didn't transfer over, or he wouldn't have a fucking head.
He allows him one second to have a tantrum. For one moment, rage is all he's working with. Destroying to destroy. It's not even people under his hands. Just priceless fucking artifacts. Paper books?
What had Bancroft said? Oh, fuck what Bancroft said. Fuck Bancroft. Fuck Dimi. Fuck all of them.
Quell whispers in his ear. Take what is offered and that must sometimes be enough.
His frantic motions slow. He's in a library, and nobody's holding a gun to his head. They are staring, but genuinely fuck them. His smile is grim and feral, perfected over hundreds of sleeves-- he knows exactly what muscles to pull, to press.
He picks up another book from the shelf, and genuinely skims over it. A storybook, not a history, not what he needs. But even with the rage bubbling in him, he's allowed himself his one senseless second of indulgence. Now all violence must be useful to him.
People are still staring, trying to figure out what he is. That's easy. Why not show them?
"Anybody got a book," he says, "on pulling out fingernails?"