OOC: Profile
CHARACTER
NAME: Julia
CANON SOURCE: Lifted from Wikipedia
TIMELINE: Episode 26, right at the point where she’s supposed to be killed
CANON ABILITIES:
Beyond her natural charisma, mad driving skills and her proficiency with firearms, Julia’s very much human, with human strengths and human frailties. Shoot her or cut her, and she WILL bleed, just like anyone else.
PERSONALITY:
If there was a sudden shootout in a café, most people would either run for their lives or freeze in place, thus opening themselves up to get injured, or, at worse, killed.
Julia, however, is not most people. If a shootout happened in a café that she happens to be resting in, she’ll simply stay at her table and keep sipping her tea or smoking her cigarette, even while bullets are whizzing over her head, even if people are crashing through the window beside her or flopping dead at her very table - she may even have half the mind to fix her mascara.
Julia is calm - deathly calm, the sort of calm that one can only get when they’re dead. It’s hard, even, to say that she’s human in the first place, given the fact that nothing seems to be able to shake her, much less even touch her. She’s cool, reserved and incredibly self-possessed as well, unruffled and distant from everything… she won’t ignore people, per se, nor make herself deliberately unapproachable, but she won’t reach out for human company either. Because of her beauty and because of this peculiar combination of aloofness and frailty that she seems to possess, she’s the sort of person that people may find themselves attracted to, even if they instinctually know that she’s bad news. Suffice to say, it takes a very special set of circumstances to turn an otherwise healthy human being into a doll.
The Syndicate used her as a pawn, throwing her at Vicious in some wild hope that putting a beautiful woman at his side and in his bed will curb his violent tendencies and make him controllable… perhaps if she had stayed after Spike left and agreed to keep on as Vicious’ woman, Vicious himself or the other people in the Syndicate would have had her do that same sort of work for other loose canons in their organization. Julia is fully aware of this, just as she is fully aware that it’s her looks and her charm that’s keeping her alive. This has pretty much left her cold, bringing her to withdraw in upon herself in order to protect what she’s still got and survive living in the underworld. She’s convinced that this is the only way to survive, and has pretty much resigned herself to her fate… that does not mean, however, that she will allow her patrons to break her any more than they already have. There’s a hard core in her that Julia does not allow anyone to touch, no matter how hard they try.
…Of course, at the end of the day, Julia is still ultimately human. She’s still a woman caught in an uncompromising position, attempting to carry on as well as she can even if it means losing parts of herself in the process. She sublimates everything she feels - anger, bitterness and grief - into what she does, because the less she feels, the less she’ll have to hurt.
CANON HISTORY:
Although she mostly appears in flash backs (she only appears in person in just two episodes out of the twenty-six in the series), Julia is one of the most integral characters in Cowboy Bebop. She, Spike Spiegel (the main character) and Vicious (Spike’s former best friend turned worst nightmare) were all members of the Red Dragon Syndicate, an intergalactic underworld organization - they were, specifically, part of the Martian Division of the Group.
From what is shown in the series, Spike first met Julia after he was gravely injured during a mission… he collapsed in front of her home, and Julia took it upon herself to nurse him back to health. It is implied that they became incredibly intimate before Spike discovered that Julia was actually a part of the same organization that she was. He also discovered, to his despair, that Julia was Vicious’ woman long before he had ever come to her. Although it is never explicitly said, it is safe to assume that this betrayal may have driven a wedge between Vicious and Spike, and may ultimately be the reason why Spike left the Syndicate.
After Spike made arrangements to leave, he approached Julia in an attempt to get her to run away with him… he instructed her to meet him at the town graveyard, so that they could leave together. Julia never came to see him, and it broke Spike’s heart - it may even be the reason why he developed the fatalistic attitude that he has throughout the series. What he never discovered was that Vicious had actually approached Julia after her conversation with Spike, thus preventing her from ever coming with him
Vicious left Julia with two choices: to go see Spike and kill him herself, or to be killed by Vicious. Julia opted for a third option: to run away from the Syndicate and go into hiding. Canon never implicitly says why Julia did this, but I am assuming that she acted this way because she did not want Spike and Vicious to kill each other, or lose her own life. At the end of the day, she might have harbored feelings for them both, and she came to realize that as long as she was around, there would be no end to it. Also, by leaving, perhaps that would have compelled Spike to leave anyway, which gave him a chance to be free. It was probably not the wisest decision, or the most fair one, but it was the only thing she could do.
Soon after reuniting with Spike in the last two episodes, Julia is killed in a shootout with Red Dragon Syndicate henchmen. She dies in Spike’s arms, and this pushes him to his final showdown with Vicious at the very end of the series.
PREFERRED PLACEMENT: Osborn. I figure that the group that owns Julia is beholden to Osborn at the end of the day… Julia’s probably well-aware of this, although it ultimately does not matter to her. She’ll stick with the group because there’s nothing left for her otherwise.
HOW DIFFERENT DO YOU WANT THE MEMORIES TO BE FROM THEIR CANON?
Julia has been with the syndicate for as long as she can remember… she’s the daughter of the woman that used to be the group’s song bird and bargaining chip, and the man that tried to set her free. Suffice to say, Daddy died a pretty gruesome death, and Mommy immediately took her own life in despair, thinking that there really WAS no escaping her fate. Julia ideally should have joined them, except the old friends of her parents figured that they could put someone with her looks to VERY good use for themselves.
For a good, long while, Julia went through the barest motions of living: she submitted blindly to the will of the people who owned her, if only because she felt that she had no other choice unless she wanted to end up dead. When she was twenty, however, one of the syndicate’s rising stars fell madly in love with her on the day she was ‘promoted’ from the resident whore to the new song bird in her mother’s place, and she with him… their relationship was so intense and beautiful that Julia even started dreaming again, thinking that perhaps there was a way to rise out of the situation she was in. When her lover told her of his intentions to run away with her at her side, she supported him whole-heartedly, and staked everything on this one chance to cut away from it all and start a new life.
To make a long story short, her man was gunned down in front of her, and her patrons decided to let her live at the price of her swearing to do exactly as they told her from then on. That was probably the day that Julia truly stopped dreaming, and came to accept her fate. That was also, however, the day that she went cold, and convinced herself that no man and nothing else will ever be able to touch her again.
Nearly a decade has passed since then, and Julia continues to be the group’s song bird, singing wherever they have her sing, and attaching herself to whatever man they point out, aiding the group in controlling the people of choice before they dispose of them. For someone who sings with such beauty and soul, it’s hard to believe that she could have such empty eyes.
PLANS FOR YOUR CHARACTER: I don’t really have any plans for this character - if she gets involved in a major plot, well and good, but if she doesn’t, that’s all right too. I do, however, want her to recover her memories at some point, most especially if she ends up getting canon mates.
NOTES: Julia is a pretty well-known singer around town… she’s a woman of amazing talent and more than notable beauty. People who try to get close to her, though, soon realize that she’s a kept woman, and her keepers don’t take too kindly to people trying to get close to their property.