PROFILE.
Name: Mike McLeary
Age/Birthdate: 25 / 18 April 1983
Sexuality: Straight
Occupation: Patrol officer for the NYPD. Mike has decent promotional prospects on the basis of skills and wits, but he’s kissing the wrong asses and he’s nobody’s teacher’s pet. He’s just beginning to overcome the new guy stigma, anyway.
Fairytale: Molly Pitcher
Ability, if any: None
Status: Generally unknown. People who know he’s a tale, know he’s a modern; they can probably deduce that he’s neither Wonderlander nor Neverlander, and he doesn’t run with the Jungle Book set. He’s more likely to let slip that he was a folkloric war hero than he is to let slip that he’s a feminist icon. Thankfully for Mike he’s the first incarnation, and it’s almost impossible to guess.
History: Michael Paul McLeary was born in New York on 15 April, 1983, exactly two hundred years after the ratification of the preliminary articles that ended the Revolutionary War. It was not a date to which anyone paid much attention, nor one he’s ever noticed himself, but that anniversary has had more impact upon his life than anyone in Queens Hospital Center could possibly have imagined, least of all its newest addition. The child was premature, slippery, very pissed off, and the shade of blue one expected from two centuries of holding his breath.
His father was an aging Vietnam Vet-turned friendly neighborhood alcoholic barber; his mother was a younger pediatric nurse. They finished off their set of children in the next year-oldest son James, middle son Michael, and daughter Jennifer, three in three years-and having produced them, promptly went about creating chores for them to perform. It’s in the McLeary blood. His father’s line is Irish-Panamanian, descended from one of the hardest-running foremen of the gigantic canal therein, a fact which is mentioned at least twice a week within the McLeary household. They have one cherished photograph of Quentin McLeary with Teddy Roosevelt, and there’s never been any doubt in his mind that if the building were on fire and his mother had to choose between that photograph and one of her children inside, he’d be toast.
Of course, that’s provided that he was inside, and for most of his childhood that was unlikely. Mike grew up in a skinny alley between two identical apartment buildings. He was fed at and slept in one of those two buildings, but between them was where he really grew up; it was where he entertained a court of several meek Korean boys (to his fathers’ ill-disguised chagrin) and a few harder-edged Catholics who listened to him God knows why, being that he was skinny and snot-nosed until he turned twelve and a total bastard thereafter. Before they learned the great benefits of angry bare-knuckle fisticuffs, they used to play cops and robbers. As was usual with these games, the bad guys outnumbered the good by a margin of three to one. Invariably Mike would deign to play the cop, and he did what good guys were supposed to do (according to early exposure to 80’s cop shows): he broke the rules in outrageous fashion. No manner of finger gun was sufficient to sink the boy.
“Doesn’t matter if I die,” he howled matter-of-factly, “I’ll just come back.” After a couple of years of his bullshit it’s unsurprising that they learned the benefits of angry bare-knuckle fisticuffs, but that’s neither here nor there. Eventually he learned that the bullshit was actually correct, but back then, the only hint that he was Molly Pitcher was a nice throwing arm.
In a few years-about when he got shoulders--Mike came around to see the other boys’ way of thinking. Being bad was pretty sweet. Much more fun, much more lucrative; he was good at it, too, and Mr. McLeary was such a neighborhood fixture that most adults gave his middle son’s antics a pass, since he was raising hell but he wasn’t really rebelling in a new or threatening way. Middle school pranks progressed into high school misdemeanors for an increased number of hello, ladies. His talents as the stupid brave guy were surpassed only by his talents for convincing stupider guys to be braver; he was a peripherally popular jock who figured out how to work the food pyramid, he functioned as the guys’ liaison to the she-gossips, and that gave him leverage in rehashing detention stories as well as first draft pick on girlfriends. He had the type of grin a girl wanted to thank for sitting across the table and stealing her fries. More than job skills or life skills, high school honed his talents as the perfect wingman he’d later become.
When during his bottom-barrel graduation young Mike McLeary had to be seriously convinced not to streak the stage, it’s a safe bet nobody-least of all the kids he grew up with, who’d dealt with his childhood law enforcement years before and all his schemes since--thought he’d turn up a cop. Of course, they were just a year and some change of community college and pizza delivery from September 2001; nobody thought a lot of things would happen, and when they did, the straightening-out of one troublemaking student athlete was the least of the adjustments. As a nurse in the city, his mother was arguably the most affected out of the family, his father couldn’t take that his wife was seeing the horrible images he’d staved off with drink since ‘Nam, and his brother, who’d had an internship uptown, moved to Philadelphia. It was a long, tough time, but long after the world righted itself, their middle son felt a kick in the gut that motivated him towards an unexpected career in law enforcement. People who might have been surprised and alarmed by his change of heart were too busy being surprised and alarmed by the world at large.
The McLearys were more fortunate than many-they’d always lived a certain way, and for the most part they’re still exactly who they were--but as Mike watched the city in turmoil something changed, something clicked in the flurry of flags, clicked like an epiphany. Oh, right: protect and serve. That’s what he was supposed to be doing. Never mind that until that point he’d ignored the law more frequently than he’d upheld it. He made it work. He learned to turn his mouth off when he had to, and managed to keep his record clean. Now with a few years under his belt, he’s still pretty well-known around the neighborhood, and it’s hard for people to imagine him not ending up an officer-though they still easily remember him before he was, and there are a few fun stories he will never escape. Not like he’d try.
There’s only one story he tries to escape, or at least defy: the one that paints him as a saintly, determined woman on a smoky battlefield, first tending to the wounded, then manning the guns herself. He’s sure it was in his High School history textbook, but he hated history, and even if he didn’t… well, Mike thinks a chick empowerment story’s a great gig when you’re a chick, but that’s not how the chromosomes played out.
The final realization of his Tale identity came during an intercepted arson, when the smell of smoke triggered some timely memories and the surge of adrenaline probably saved his life. Patricia was waiting for him at the station when he returned. It’s been a year since then, and he still can’t get over it or into it. He has no idea why the magic played such a bastard trick, and still holds out a glimmer of hope that it was a mix-up and he’s Paul Revere or something of that nature-but in his gut, he knows who he is. Someday he might grow to accept that the Molly Pitcher folktale is a lesson of a brave and resilient person, not just a brave and resilient woman.
Until then, he isn’t sure exactly what it means. He’s thought about actually enlisting more than once (because of his Tale and because of his father), despite being quite sure that he belongs where he is, but James has moved to Philadelphia, Jennifer is too busy at FIT with her new fiancé, his father still drinks and his mother has a nerve condition. Of course there are other people around to pick up groceries on the rare occasion that his parents need it, the block is still the tightly-knit bureau of busybodies that made him flee outside as a childhood, but he’s not comfortable with the direction the neighborhood’s taken. It’s not just concern about them, either. The politics of his tale make him uncomfortable when mapped against the politics of the day, and believe what he will about the war, he’s not comfortable fighting against rebel insurgencies. Shipping out is out of the question.
He tries not to get too worked up about the whole tale business. Thinking about it too long convinces him only to worry more. Over the last year he’s commented in compendiums but has never written an entry of his own; he stares at the little brown book and tries in vain to reconcile his mind to the whole idea of magic. Not as often as he stares at Molly’s wiki page, but enough. He doesn’t do either of those things as often as he hangs out in bars or falls asleep to movies in his apartment. If he could choose a life with more of the last and none of the first two, he’d be sorely tempted to go for it.
Personality: When his colleagues on the force say that Mike is a jackass, about fifty percent of what they mean is that he’s smarter than he deserves-being quick on the uptake is different from being learned, but he’s got a lot of column a and enough of column be to get him through the day. But the other half of what they mean is that he’s really a jackass, and it’s true. He’s a harmless jackass and everyone knows it, but a jackass nonetheless. He’s clever. He’s gregarious. In the circle he runs in, the fondest expression of affection is to give somebody a hard time. Claps on the shoulder, fist bumps, obliquely homoerotic catcalls: that’s his second language, following closely behind the thick Queens accent that couldn’t be any more classic if it was on a hot dog commercial. There’s another side to him, but it’s harder to get in touch with, and somewhat less likely to buy everyone another round, so why bother trotting it out?
He’s an easygoing, likeable guy for all the trouble he’s made, and he’s not exceptionally calloused, cruel or crooked among his peers. His intentions, big-picture, are good. He’s responsible with his duties (if not in his personal life), he’s hard to rattle and hard to anger. He doesn’t open up easily and that’s probably for the best. His profession doesn’t lend itself easily to touchy-feely expressions of emotion--there is exactly one sort of touching and feeling that he has a professed interest in, thanks. There’s some evidence to suggest that this is “draping his coat over the shoulders of a trauma victim”, but all he’ll admit to is “bragging about halter-topped co-eds at sports bars”.
He’d be much more at home calling a civilian “dude” than “sir”, although like many men in his profession he can say “please, sir” on the street like it’s an ages-long insult. He tends to address people casually when he has a say in it, but there are several settings in Mike’s voice now and a few of the more authoritative ones are jarring to old friends or casual acquaintances. He has a business voice now, and seven years ago that would’ve been antithetical to his character. His nature skirts a thin line between engaging and irreverent, so when he does speak with genuine appreciation, it’s weightier and worth something.
Policework has given him a harder edge at times than he would have possessed otherwise. It’s also changed his attitudes towards women, or maybe the advent of Molly Pitcher is more responsible for that. He’s seen a lot of domestic disturbance calls and he’s developed a real hatred for bastards who knock women around. It’s also the first time he’s bonded with women on a professional level. Mike doesn’t think law enforcement should be a boys’ club, he’s had his ass handed to him by more than his share of tough-as-nails female officers, but he does think there’s a reason for a gender imbalance on the force--it takes something extra for them to be there, and if he’s completely honest he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing that they have to work harder for every pound of respect, since it makes them better at what they do. That was the distinction that made him a Tale.
So that’s his preferred variety of empowered woman, romanticized by the fact that this lifetime he doesn’t have to deal with all they do, and he doesn’t care for the other kind at all. For whatever reason, women who have it together-who have a “yoga window”, who have dual degrees and a well-reviewed restaurant, who put their menstrual cycles in their blackberries just like lunch dates and Givency sales-bother him in the extreme. He finds them threatening and irritating in equal measure. It’s a Molly Pitcher thing. He has little fondness for accomplished women who still always cross their legs at the ankle. Given his tale identity, a preference for battle-scarred or prickly dames could very well be narcissism, and in that case he’s more than guilty.
He has his share of things to feel guilty about, though for the most part he doesn’t. He’s been known to look the other way for people to whom he’s close, which is a luxury he can’t afford at this point in his career. He can’t be bought off… but he’s also new, relatively un-jaded, and hasn’t been strapped for cash since he started. He likes boxing more than baseball, and bare-knuckle boxing more than boxing, so when illegal matches spring up in Brooklyn he’s not above stopping by (not unheard-of amongst his fellow officers). He judges quickly and openly and could be better at holding his tongue. He holds irrationally long grudges, still-bristles-at-British-accents-long. His opinions are difficult to change, and his first impressions difficult to shake.
He also makes those first impressions quicker than someone who has the luxury of time. Not like he tries to be racist-he’s had a black partner, they were pretty tight--but his quick appraisals skirt awfully close to prejudiced, and with his ass on the line, he’ll take generalizations over a tag in the chest. He figures karma will justify him: he risks his life for the sake of the oppressed, and what have sweater-wearing pamphlet-waving white boys ever done with a multicultural lit degree? Less than what he brings to the job every day. They can bite it.
Mike’s minor vices, which include sports bars, onion rings, 70’s horror movies, garage rock, sex, and bad coffee, are so carried off so well that they almost constitute charms. When he’s out he drinks frequently and with feeling, though it’s just beer (unless it’s tequila) and he can hold it all pretty well. He teases, but he also listens to people he respects. He lets friends crash on his couch if they need it. It’s a stressful job so he deserves what fun he can have outside, but these days he has a good head on his shoulders even when he’s enjoying himself. He laughs and plays along with people who knows can take it, but as a general rule he doesn’t give much worse than he gets.
About: Authorities in the Atheneum who learned of his Tale existence were surprised to catch Molly Pitcher walking around, but certainly not as surprised as Molly Pitcher himself, since he had for a long time assumed that his restless dreams about canon fire came from falling asleep to too many History Channel specials (one of his exes was addicted to those things, which might explain why she liked him so much). That his folktale has come into existence raises some fairly important questions about where the lines are and who will pop up next, but damned if he’ll fret over that all himself. He doesn’t care for the nuances. It makes him a better cop, so that’s important. It got him a talking book, so there’s a novelty. Sure, he’d prefer avoiding the cold-sweat dreams, but he’s seen his share of crime scenes and crimes in progress-who wouldn’t get them?
The pride he takes in his work is undercut by a fear that he’s just indulging Molly’s heroics, and that without the Tale he’d be a hapless nobody on the other side of the bars. It’s hard for him to accept that theirs could be the same goals, tendencies, and impulses. He views it as a clean split down the middle of his soul, the way he and his brother laid a physical line across their shared bedroom. He’ll stay on his half, Mrs. Pitcher can have hers, and never the twain shall they meet. Of course it doesn’t work out that way. It’s much more complicated when he realizes that they’re not dueling impulses that can bicker and fight, but rather one cohesive human being. He thinks he’s a good guy, but he doesn’t think he’s a particularly good guy. He’s certainly no folk hero.
Player: Jane
Age: 20
Other characters: antigrasshopper, wishboned, invisibyron, bbgoat
AIM: WaffleNinja4092
Disclaimer: Totally not a cop, Dave Annable, or in any way Mike McLeary, you guys. I wouldn't know if I'm Molly Pitcher, but it seems like it would be kind of a pain.
Age/Birthdate: 25 / 18 April 1983
Sexuality: Straight
Occupation: Patrol officer for the NYPD. Mike has decent promotional prospects on the basis of skills and wits, but he’s kissing the wrong asses and he’s nobody’s teacher’s pet. He’s just beginning to overcome the new guy stigma, anyway.
Fairytale: Molly Pitcher
Ability, if any: None
Status: Generally unknown. People who know he’s a tale, know he’s a modern; they can probably deduce that he’s neither Wonderlander nor Neverlander, and he doesn’t run with the Jungle Book set. He’s more likely to let slip that he was a folkloric war hero than he is to let slip that he’s a feminist icon. Thankfully for Mike he’s the first incarnation, and it’s almost impossible to guess.
History: Michael Paul McLeary was born in New York on 15 April, 1983, exactly two hundred years after the ratification of the preliminary articles that ended the Revolutionary War. It was not a date to which anyone paid much attention, nor one he’s ever noticed himself, but that anniversary has had more impact upon his life than anyone in Queens Hospital Center could possibly have imagined, least of all its newest addition. The child was premature, slippery, very pissed off, and the shade of blue one expected from two centuries of holding his breath.
His father was an aging Vietnam Vet-turned friendly neighborhood alcoholic barber; his mother was a younger pediatric nurse. They finished off their set of children in the next year-oldest son James, middle son Michael, and daughter Jennifer, three in three years-and having produced them, promptly went about creating chores for them to perform. It’s in the McLeary blood. His father’s line is Irish-Panamanian, descended from one of the hardest-running foremen of the gigantic canal therein, a fact which is mentioned at least twice a week within the McLeary household. They have one cherished photograph of Quentin McLeary with Teddy Roosevelt, and there’s never been any doubt in his mind that if the building were on fire and his mother had to choose between that photograph and one of her children inside, he’d be toast.
Of course, that’s provided that he was inside, and for most of his childhood that was unlikely. Mike grew up in a skinny alley between two identical apartment buildings. He was fed at and slept in one of those two buildings, but between them was where he really grew up; it was where he entertained a court of several meek Korean boys (to his fathers’ ill-disguised chagrin) and a few harder-edged Catholics who listened to him God knows why, being that he was skinny and snot-nosed until he turned twelve and a total bastard thereafter. Before they learned the great benefits of angry bare-knuckle fisticuffs, they used to play cops and robbers. As was usual with these games, the bad guys outnumbered the good by a margin of three to one. Invariably Mike would deign to play the cop, and he did what good guys were supposed to do (according to early exposure to 80’s cop shows): he broke the rules in outrageous fashion. No manner of finger gun was sufficient to sink the boy.
“Doesn’t matter if I die,” he howled matter-of-factly, “I’ll just come back.” After a couple of years of his bullshit it’s unsurprising that they learned the benefits of angry bare-knuckle fisticuffs, but that’s neither here nor there. Eventually he learned that the bullshit was actually correct, but back then, the only hint that he was Molly Pitcher was a nice throwing arm.
In a few years-about when he got shoulders--Mike came around to see the other boys’ way of thinking. Being bad was pretty sweet. Much more fun, much more lucrative; he was good at it, too, and Mr. McLeary was such a neighborhood fixture that most adults gave his middle son’s antics a pass, since he was raising hell but he wasn’t really rebelling in a new or threatening way. Middle school pranks progressed into high school misdemeanors for an increased number of hello, ladies. His talents as the stupid brave guy were surpassed only by his talents for convincing stupider guys to be braver; he was a peripherally popular jock who figured out how to work the food pyramid, he functioned as the guys’ liaison to the she-gossips, and that gave him leverage in rehashing detention stories as well as first draft pick on girlfriends. He had the type of grin a girl wanted to thank for sitting across the table and stealing her fries. More than job skills or life skills, high school honed his talents as the perfect wingman he’d later become.
When during his bottom-barrel graduation young Mike McLeary had to be seriously convinced not to streak the stage, it’s a safe bet nobody-least of all the kids he grew up with, who’d dealt with his childhood law enforcement years before and all his schemes since--thought he’d turn up a cop. Of course, they were just a year and some change of community college and pizza delivery from September 2001; nobody thought a lot of things would happen, and when they did, the straightening-out of one troublemaking student athlete was the least of the adjustments. As a nurse in the city, his mother was arguably the most affected out of the family, his father couldn’t take that his wife was seeing the horrible images he’d staved off with drink since ‘Nam, and his brother, who’d had an internship uptown, moved to Philadelphia. It was a long, tough time, but long after the world righted itself, their middle son felt a kick in the gut that motivated him towards an unexpected career in law enforcement. People who might have been surprised and alarmed by his change of heart were too busy being surprised and alarmed by the world at large.
The McLearys were more fortunate than many-they’d always lived a certain way, and for the most part they’re still exactly who they were--but as Mike watched the city in turmoil something changed, something clicked in the flurry of flags, clicked like an epiphany. Oh, right: protect and serve. That’s what he was supposed to be doing. Never mind that until that point he’d ignored the law more frequently than he’d upheld it. He made it work. He learned to turn his mouth off when he had to, and managed to keep his record clean. Now with a few years under his belt, he’s still pretty well-known around the neighborhood, and it’s hard for people to imagine him not ending up an officer-though they still easily remember him before he was, and there are a few fun stories he will never escape. Not like he’d try.
There’s only one story he tries to escape, or at least defy: the one that paints him as a saintly, determined woman on a smoky battlefield, first tending to the wounded, then manning the guns herself. He’s sure it was in his High School history textbook, but he hated history, and even if he didn’t… well, Mike thinks a chick empowerment story’s a great gig when you’re a chick, but that’s not how the chromosomes played out.
The final realization of his Tale identity came during an intercepted arson, when the smell of smoke triggered some timely memories and the surge of adrenaline probably saved his life. Patricia was waiting for him at the station when he returned. It’s been a year since then, and he still can’t get over it or into it. He has no idea why the magic played such a bastard trick, and still holds out a glimmer of hope that it was a mix-up and he’s Paul Revere or something of that nature-but in his gut, he knows who he is. Someday he might grow to accept that the Molly Pitcher folktale is a lesson of a brave and resilient person, not just a brave and resilient woman.
Until then, he isn’t sure exactly what it means. He’s thought about actually enlisting more than once (because of his Tale and because of his father), despite being quite sure that he belongs where he is, but James has moved to Philadelphia, Jennifer is too busy at FIT with her new fiancé, his father still drinks and his mother has a nerve condition. Of course there are other people around to pick up groceries on the rare occasion that his parents need it, the block is still the tightly-knit bureau of busybodies that made him flee outside as a childhood, but he’s not comfortable with the direction the neighborhood’s taken. It’s not just concern about them, either. The politics of his tale make him uncomfortable when mapped against the politics of the day, and believe what he will about the war, he’s not comfortable fighting against rebel insurgencies. Shipping out is out of the question.
He tries not to get too worked up about the whole tale business. Thinking about it too long convinces him only to worry more. Over the last year he’s commented in compendiums but has never written an entry of his own; he stares at the little brown book and tries in vain to reconcile his mind to the whole idea of magic. Not as often as he stares at Molly’s wiki page, but enough. He doesn’t do either of those things as often as he hangs out in bars or falls asleep to movies in his apartment. If he could choose a life with more of the last and none of the first two, he’d be sorely tempted to go for it.
Personality: When his colleagues on the force say that Mike is a jackass, about fifty percent of what they mean is that he’s smarter than he deserves-being quick on the uptake is different from being learned, but he’s got a lot of column a and enough of column be to get him through the day. But the other half of what they mean is that he’s really a jackass, and it’s true. He’s a harmless jackass and everyone knows it, but a jackass nonetheless. He’s clever. He’s gregarious. In the circle he runs in, the fondest expression of affection is to give somebody a hard time. Claps on the shoulder, fist bumps, obliquely homoerotic catcalls: that’s his second language, following closely behind the thick Queens accent that couldn’t be any more classic if it was on a hot dog commercial. There’s another side to him, but it’s harder to get in touch with, and somewhat less likely to buy everyone another round, so why bother trotting it out?
He’s an easygoing, likeable guy for all the trouble he’s made, and he’s not exceptionally calloused, cruel or crooked among his peers. His intentions, big-picture, are good. He’s responsible with his duties (if not in his personal life), he’s hard to rattle and hard to anger. He doesn’t open up easily and that’s probably for the best. His profession doesn’t lend itself easily to touchy-feely expressions of emotion--there is exactly one sort of touching and feeling that he has a professed interest in, thanks. There’s some evidence to suggest that this is “draping his coat over the shoulders of a trauma victim”, but all he’ll admit to is “bragging about halter-topped co-eds at sports bars”.
He’d be much more at home calling a civilian “dude” than “sir”, although like many men in his profession he can say “please, sir” on the street like it’s an ages-long insult. He tends to address people casually when he has a say in it, but there are several settings in Mike’s voice now and a few of the more authoritative ones are jarring to old friends or casual acquaintances. He has a business voice now, and seven years ago that would’ve been antithetical to his character. His nature skirts a thin line between engaging and irreverent, so when he does speak with genuine appreciation, it’s weightier and worth something.
Policework has given him a harder edge at times than he would have possessed otherwise. It’s also changed his attitudes towards women, or maybe the advent of Molly Pitcher is more responsible for that. He’s seen a lot of domestic disturbance calls and he’s developed a real hatred for bastards who knock women around. It’s also the first time he’s bonded with women on a professional level. Mike doesn’t think law enforcement should be a boys’ club, he’s had his ass handed to him by more than his share of tough-as-nails female officers, but he does think there’s a reason for a gender imbalance on the force--it takes something extra for them to be there, and if he’s completely honest he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing that they have to work harder for every pound of respect, since it makes them better at what they do. That was the distinction that made him a Tale.
So that’s his preferred variety of empowered woman, romanticized by the fact that this lifetime he doesn’t have to deal with all they do, and he doesn’t care for the other kind at all. For whatever reason, women who have it together-who have a “yoga window”, who have dual degrees and a well-reviewed restaurant, who put their menstrual cycles in their blackberries just like lunch dates and Givency sales-bother him in the extreme. He finds them threatening and irritating in equal measure. It’s a Molly Pitcher thing. He has little fondness for accomplished women who still always cross their legs at the ankle. Given his tale identity, a preference for battle-scarred or prickly dames could very well be narcissism, and in that case he’s more than guilty.
He has his share of things to feel guilty about, though for the most part he doesn’t. He’s been known to look the other way for people to whom he’s close, which is a luxury he can’t afford at this point in his career. He can’t be bought off… but he’s also new, relatively un-jaded, and hasn’t been strapped for cash since he started. He likes boxing more than baseball, and bare-knuckle boxing more than boxing, so when illegal matches spring up in Brooklyn he’s not above stopping by (not unheard-of amongst his fellow officers). He judges quickly and openly and could be better at holding his tongue. He holds irrationally long grudges, still-bristles-at-British-accents-long. His opinions are difficult to change, and his first impressions difficult to shake.
He also makes those first impressions quicker than someone who has the luxury of time. Not like he tries to be racist-he’s had a black partner, they were pretty tight--but his quick appraisals skirt awfully close to prejudiced, and with his ass on the line, he’ll take generalizations over a tag in the chest. He figures karma will justify him: he risks his life for the sake of the oppressed, and what have sweater-wearing pamphlet-waving white boys ever done with a multicultural lit degree? Less than what he brings to the job every day. They can bite it.
Mike’s minor vices, which include sports bars, onion rings, 70’s horror movies, garage rock, sex, and bad coffee, are so carried off so well that they almost constitute charms. When he’s out he drinks frequently and with feeling, though it’s just beer (unless it’s tequila) and he can hold it all pretty well. He teases, but he also listens to people he respects. He lets friends crash on his couch if they need it. It’s a stressful job so he deserves what fun he can have outside, but these days he has a good head on his shoulders even when he’s enjoying himself. He laughs and plays along with people who knows can take it, but as a general rule he doesn’t give much worse than he gets.
About: Authorities in the Atheneum who learned of his Tale existence were surprised to catch Molly Pitcher walking around, but certainly not as surprised as Molly Pitcher himself, since he had for a long time assumed that his restless dreams about canon fire came from falling asleep to too many History Channel specials (one of his exes was addicted to those things, which might explain why she liked him so much). That his folktale has come into existence raises some fairly important questions about where the lines are and who will pop up next, but damned if he’ll fret over that all himself. He doesn’t care for the nuances. It makes him a better cop, so that’s important. It got him a talking book, so there’s a novelty. Sure, he’d prefer avoiding the cold-sweat dreams, but he’s seen his share of crime scenes and crimes in progress-who wouldn’t get them?
The pride he takes in his work is undercut by a fear that he’s just indulging Molly’s heroics, and that without the Tale he’d be a hapless nobody on the other side of the bars. It’s hard for him to accept that theirs could be the same goals, tendencies, and impulses. He views it as a clean split down the middle of his soul, the way he and his brother laid a physical line across their shared bedroom. He’ll stay on his half, Mrs. Pitcher can have hers, and never the twain shall they meet. Of course it doesn’t work out that way. It’s much more complicated when he realizes that they’re not dueling impulses that can bicker and fight, but rather one cohesive human being. He thinks he’s a good guy, but he doesn’t think he’s a particularly good guy. He’s certainly no folk hero.
Player: Jane
Age: 20
Other characters: antigrasshopper, wishboned, invisibyron, bbgoat
AIM: WaffleNinja4092
Disclaimer: Totally not a cop, Dave Annable, or in any way Mike McLeary, you guys. I wouldn't know if I'm Molly Pitcher, but it seems like it would be kind of a pain.