Deployment: OOC Info
?OOC Information
Name: Jess
LJ: amerou
E-Mail: jess@lostmysanity.net
IM: Amerou Howling
Characters played at EGU: Erica McElraft
Dropped any?: N/A
? Character Information
Name: Seifer Almasy
Series: Final Fantasy VIII
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Straight (mostly)
School year: Freshman
Major: Criminology
Minor: Chemistry
Residence: Dorms
Occupation: Freight team at a home improvement store, and one weekend a month at National Guard.
Appearance: ( TLDR link ) At 6'3", built like an athlete and with the swagger of a gunfighter, Seifer is hard to miss even in a crowd. The scar is generally the first thing people notice, an angry scarlet scrawl across his forehead and slightly-crooked nose, rising from left to right from the upswing of a knife. His hair is a coppery blonde that turns gold in the sun, worn short (and shaved military-style for weekend duty,) accompanied by pale skin and piercing absinthe-green eyes. On the rare occasion that he does not wear long sleeves, scars stripe up and down his arms and arc across his chest, relics both of a rough childhood and experience in war. Centered on his upper back is a vivid crimson and silver Templar cross, approximately six by eight inches, and he is never seen without his dog-tags dangling from his neck.
Personality: To say that Seifer has aggression problems is something like saying that it gets a little wet in the ocean. Cocky, potty-mouthed and competitive to a fault, he is a Leo in every way, absolutely needing to be the best at everything he puts his mind to. Part of this is from a suppressed need for attention, stemming from a crappy, abusive dad; the rest of it is pure arrogance. People either love his wicked sense of humour or hate his nasty pride, and he has a talent for finding people's Do Not Push buttons - as well as a mischievous disregard for what will happen if he starts banging on them. If you can play hardball with him without flinching, you earn his respect. If, on the other hand, you get your feelings hurt too easily, he'll have nothing to do with you. If you can somehow earn his friendship, he is more loyal than a wolf and twice as fierce in the defense of his posse, and he will wade through hell and high water without batting an eye to go to the aid of his buddies. As hard as he pushes his friends, though, the person he is hardest on is himself. He is driven to succeed, and he will, whether he has to drag himself across that finish line on hands and knees. Although many people look at the scar on his face and assume that he is a thug of some kind, Seifer is very bright and excells in many subjects without the compulsive studying other students require. He is a bit lacking in the math area, though, despite all of Fuujin's attempts to teach it to him, and he struggles in any subject matter requiring more than basic algebra.
Interestingly, Seifer has a chivalrous streak a mile wide and is, for the most part, courteous to women, opening doors and pushing in chairs in the like, but if a girl pisses him off, she'd better learn how to fend for herself in a hurry. His string of unsuccessful relationships ("my succession of bitches") stems a lot from his unbending pride and need to be right, as well as his inability to find his dream girl, a woman who can keep up with him mentally, and one who is willing to shout right back in his face when he gets impassioned about something. His temper is horrific and tends to run away with him, and he has to excercise his not-inconsiderable discipline to avoid making confrontations physical. He has never hit someone who didn't hurt him or someone he cares about first - that much can be said for him - but once the gloves come off, he is capable of serious damage. And though you wouldn't know it by looking at his cocky exterior, Seifer is quietly terrified that every day he is becoming more and more like his father, especially in respects of controlling his temper. He abstains completely from alcohol and smokes only when he needs to calm his nerves and steady his hands, obsessing over keeping both mind and body fit. Between classes during the day and work at night, he hardly has any time to sleep - but that's okay, because Seifer is a chronic insomniac. Nightmares of his childhood, or of the things he saw while he was deployed, haunt him in his sleep, and it is not unusual for him to show up to work or class with dark rings under his eyes.
History: Born in "a little hick town nobody's ever heard of", Seifer didn't exactly get the best start in life. His father Seigfried was an immigrant and an abusive alcoholic, and his mother had died shortly after he was born of complications from the pregnancy; he was told from a young age that he had killed his mom and bankrupted the family from her medical bills, and that all the bad things his father did were in punishment for that. Seifer never even knew his mother's name. Knowing no other way (yet), the young boy kept his head down and obeyed his father with a trembling heart, unaware that there was even such a thing as rebellion. To this day, Seifer swears he has no idea how he survived to be old enough to enroll in public school, but once he did, it was lifechanging. On the first day in his kindergarten class, he met his posse, two lifelong friends in the form of a young albino girl named Fuujin, and her adopted brother, a Filipino boy called Raijin. Surrounded for the first time by people who cared enough to ask why he had a black eye or mysterious bruises, he came out of his shell and flourished, becoming outspoken, fiery-tempered and something of a bully, gaining his trademark scar at twelve, in a knife fight with another student. (That one got him suspended for a month.) Seifer began spending more and more time at Fuujin & Raijin's house and less and less at his own, not exactly afraid of going home, but more of what would happen if he did - and the family took him in as one of their own, hiding him in back rooms when Seigfried came looking for him. After a while, Seigfried stopped looking, and Seifer completely forgot about him, throwing himself into his new life. All three of the posse made it into the honors program in their areas of expertise (Seifer in science, Fuujin in math, Raijin in english) and were skipped a grade to make their homework more challenging. Although the adoption was never formally legalized, it was understood at school and in town that Seifer wanted nothing to do with the senior Almasy.
He was fifteen when his father showed up at the house drunk, looking for his son. Although Seifer initially refused to come out of hiding, when Seigfried caught Fuujin ("you little red-eyed bitch, you're the one hiding him, aren't you!") and hit her in the face with a broken bottle, Seifer rushed out in a fury and tackled his father to the ground. Despite being younger, smaller and physically less able than his father, Seifer beat the ever-loving shit out of him, releasing all those years of pent-up anger, making a ruin of his face and putting the older man in the hospital. Fuujin came close to losing her eye, and the scars left from the incident prompted her to wear a large patch and style her hair over the area, as though it could be covered and forgotten so easily. Although Fuujin told him over and over that it wasn't his fault, Seifer never forgave himself for allowed her to get hurt for his sake. He spent a night in Juvie over charges of assault while Seigfried languished in the ER, and sitting there in the cell he realized that he had become the one thing he hated most: his father. He hurt people and cowered in the back, afraid of the consequences, instead of being the protector, the white knight from the stories he always read, and facing the future head-on. It was another turning point in his life, and when the charges on both sides came to court, Seifer stood up in the witness box, stripped his shirt to show the scars of years of abuse, and told the judge in so many words that "if that bastard ever shows his face around my family again, I'll fucking kill him." Although the charges against him were cleared due to a ruling that he was defending the life of his adoptive sister, the judge ordered Seifer to undergo counseling for his traumatic childhood and hair-trigger temper, at the same time issuing a restraining order against Seigfried (likely halfway for the man's own safety). Seifer went to a few sessions, then gave up when it became apparent, to him at least, that the psychologist was just in it to drag him over the coals of his memories. Seigfried never showed up again in Seifer's life, and Seifer does not miss him in the slightest.
The posse graduated at 17, and with no money and no prospects, Seifer promptly enlisted in the military. Fuujin and Raijin, of course, tried to follow him; Fuujin was turned down for service due to her eye, but Seifer and Raijin (somehow managing to clear the psychological exam) were shipped off to basic, and from there to a specialized school for MPs, or military police. Seifer was just shy of 19 when his unit was activated and deployed overseas, first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. Though he saw some really evil things and the darkest side of human nature, he persevered and did his job to the best of his ability, managing to come through with nothing worse than a gunshot wound or two. Unfortunately, two weeks before the end of their first tour of duty, Seifer's convoy came under fire on the outskirts of Tikrit, which left two men dead and a third shot through the windpipe, who survived only due to the convoy medic's quick actions. Seifer, forgetting all discipline, charged the building alone and bodily dragged out two of the terrorists, who had thrown down their weapons, expecting that surrender would ensure they would only be arrested, no matter what they had done. Seifer came closer than the rest of his unit ever realized to becoming a cold-blooded murderer, standing over the prone terrorists with his rifle, eyes blazing and ready to wreak vengeance upon them for the deaths of his friends. It was Raijin that prevented Seifer from doing something worthy of a court martial, calming his buddy down from the brink of berserking. Seifer has a piece of paper on his wall for the incident, a 'Certificate of Achievement' for honorable actions and bravery under fire, but it was a bitter victory, and doesn't make his buddies any less dead.
Once Seifer was shipped back home, his time in active duty served, he applied to be transferred to the National Guard, and put in for his GI Bill funding to pay for a college education. Something worthwhile might as well come out of the nasty crap he put himself through, and half of his training was applicable as college credits anyway....
?Samples
Third Person:
for the umpteenth time since he had received it, SPC Seifer Almasy reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and drew out a creased and sand-stained letter, unfolded it almost reverently, and began to read with a crooked smirk upon his sunburned face. He knew this letter by heart, now; in Fuujin's crabbed and curt hand, she told him about home and how she missed him and Rai, and little things like how some little punk at the bookstore had hit on her ("I'm going to have to talk to that boy," Seifer always thought) before she had kicked him in the shin and stormed off ("Thatta girl, Fuu"). She wrote of the dog and the parents and the house, and how she was starting school soon, and how he could use her math textbooks when he got back from overseas. The leaves were turning red, she spoke, and it was starting to get cold at nights, enough so to make her breath steam like dragon-tails. Pretty soon it might even snow.
"I know you don't mean to tease me like that, Fuu," Seifer growled good-naturedly at the letter, laughter in his eyes even as he said it, "but that's just cruel."
"Who are you talking to?" LT Haynline peered over at him with one black brow cocked, the bandage on his neck purling and tugging at his skin. Seifer glanced over, smirked, and shook his head as he folded the letter and tucked it away, settling into his uncomfortable airport seat to wait for the long ride home.
"No one."
First Person:
Goddamn but I had forgotten how much I loved looking at trees. Or rocks. Or roads. Or anything that isn't fucking sand. And air conditioning. Man, I love air conditioning.
By the way, if you have never stepped off of a plane from Iraq with an enormous crowd waiting to applaud you for coming home, you should try it sometime. It's great for your ego.
Fuu met me and Rai at the airport with a great big hug, all flushed and embarassed, but happy we were home. I'm glad to be back, not just because people aren't shooting at me anymore - it didn't feel right over in the big sandbox without her there. Damn the military and their minimum requirements. But it's my own damn fault she has that eyepatch in the first place, so I can't exactly bitch at them.... Tomorrow I'll file my paperwork, get put in the Guard and live the weekend warrior life. Then I'll worry about finding a school that will take me, and getting a damn car, and finding out where the hell I'm going to live - it'd be kind of sad, for a combat veteran to still be living with his family. Maybe I can get enough funding for a dorm room once I get in college.
But all that is for tomorrow.
Tonight, I'm going to party.
Name: Jess
LJ: amerou
E-Mail: jess@lostmysanity.net
IM: Amerou Howling
Characters played at EGU: Erica McElraft
Dropped any?: N/A
? Character Information
Name: Seifer Almasy
Series: Final Fantasy VIII
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Straight (mostly)
School year: Freshman
Major: Criminology
Minor: Chemistry
Residence: Dorms
Occupation: Freight team at a home improvement store, and one weekend a month at National Guard.
Appearance: ( TLDR link ) At 6'3", built like an athlete and with the swagger of a gunfighter, Seifer is hard to miss even in a crowd. The scar is generally the first thing people notice, an angry scarlet scrawl across his forehead and slightly-crooked nose, rising from left to right from the upswing of a knife. His hair is a coppery blonde that turns gold in the sun, worn short (and shaved military-style for weekend duty,) accompanied by pale skin and piercing absinthe-green eyes. On the rare occasion that he does not wear long sleeves, scars stripe up and down his arms and arc across his chest, relics both of a rough childhood and experience in war. Centered on his upper back is a vivid crimson and silver Templar cross, approximately six by eight inches, and he is never seen without his dog-tags dangling from his neck.
Personality: To say that Seifer has aggression problems is something like saying that it gets a little wet in the ocean. Cocky, potty-mouthed and competitive to a fault, he is a Leo in every way, absolutely needing to be the best at everything he puts his mind to. Part of this is from a suppressed need for attention, stemming from a crappy, abusive dad; the rest of it is pure arrogance. People either love his wicked sense of humour or hate his nasty pride, and he has a talent for finding people's Do Not Push buttons - as well as a mischievous disregard for what will happen if he starts banging on them. If you can play hardball with him without flinching, you earn his respect. If, on the other hand, you get your feelings hurt too easily, he'll have nothing to do with you. If you can somehow earn his friendship, he is more loyal than a wolf and twice as fierce in the defense of his posse, and he will wade through hell and high water without batting an eye to go to the aid of his buddies. As hard as he pushes his friends, though, the person he is hardest on is himself. He is driven to succeed, and he will, whether he has to drag himself across that finish line on hands and knees. Although many people look at the scar on his face and assume that he is a thug of some kind, Seifer is very bright and excells in many subjects without the compulsive studying other students require. He is a bit lacking in the math area, though, despite all of Fuujin's attempts to teach it to him, and he struggles in any subject matter requiring more than basic algebra.
Interestingly, Seifer has a chivalrous streak a mile wide and is, for the most part, courteous to women, opening doors and pushing in chairs in the like, but if a girl pisses him off, she'd better learn how to fend for herself in a hurry. His string of unsuccessful relationships ("my succession of bitches") stems a lot from his unbending pride and need to be right, as well as his inability to find his dream girl, a woman who can keep up with him mentally, and one who is willing to shout right back in his face when he gets impassioned about something. His temper is horrific and tends to run away with him, and he has to excercise his not-inconsiderable discipline to avoid making confrontations physical. He has never hit someone who didn't hurt him or someone he cares about first - that much can be said for him - but once the gloves come off, he is capable of serious damage. And though you wouldn't know it by looking at his cocky exterior, Seifer is quietly terrified that every day he is becoming more and more like his father, especially in respects of controlling his temper. He abstains completely from alcohol and smokes only when he needs to calm his nerves and steady his hands, obsessing over keeping both mind and body fit. Between classes during the day and work at night, he hardly has any time to sleep - but that's okay, because Seifer is a chronic insomniac. Nightmares of his childhood, or of the things he saw while he was deployed, haunt him in his sleep, and it is not unusual for him to show up to work or class with dark rings under his eyes.
History: Born in "a little hick town nobody's ever heard of", Seifer didn't exactly get the best start in life. His father Seigfried was an immigrant and an abusive alcoholic, and his mother had died shortly after he was born of complications from the pregnancy; he was told from a young age that he had killed his mom and bankrupted the family from her medical bills, and that all the bad things his father did were in punishment for that. Seifer never even knew his mother's name. Knowing no other way (yet), the young boy kept his head down and obeyed his father with a trembling heart, unaware that there was even such a thing as rebellion. To this day, Seifer swears he has no idea how he survived to be old enough to enroll in public school, but once he did, it was lifechanging. On the first day in his kindergarten class, he met his posse, two lifelong friends in the form of a young albino girl named Fuujin, and her adopted brother, a Filipino boy called Raijin. Surrounded for the first time by people who cared enough to ask why he had a black eye or mysterious bruises, he came out of his shell and flourished, becoming outspoken, fiery-tempered and something of a bully, gaining his trademark scar at twelve, in a knife fight with another student. (That one got him suspended for a month.) Seifer began spending more and more time at Fuujin & Raijin's house and less and less at his own, not exactly afraid of going home, but more of what would happen if he did - and the family took him in as one of their own, hiding him in back rooms when Seigfried came looking for him. After a while, Seigfried stopped looking, and Seifer completely forgot about him, throwing himself into his new life. All three of the posse made it into the honors program in their areas of expertise (Seifer in science, Fuujin in math, Raijin in english) and were skipped a grade to make their homework more challenging. Although the adoption was never formally legalized, it was understood at school and in town that Seifer wanted nothing to do with the senior Almasy.
He was fifteen when his father showed up at the house drunk, looking for his son. Although Seifer initially refused to come out of hiding, when Seigfried caught Fuujin ("you little red-eyed bitch, you're the one hiding him, aren't you!") and hit her in the face with a broken bottle, Seifer rushed out in a fury and tackled his father to the ground. Despite being younger, smaller and physically less able than his father, Seifer beat the ever-loving shit out of him, releasing all those years of pent-up anger, making a ruin of his face and putting the older man in the hospital. Fuujin came close to losing her eye, and the scars left from the incident prompted her to wear a large patch and style her hair over the area, as though it could be covered and forgotten so easily. Although Fuujin told him over and over that it wasn't his fault, Seifer never forgave himself for allowed her to get hurt for his sake. He spent a night in Juvie over charges of assault while Seigfried languished in the ER, and sitting there in the cell he realized that he had become the one thing he hated most: his father. He hurt people and cowered in the back, afraid of the consequences, instead of being the protector, the white knight from the stories he always read, and facing the future head-on. It was another turning point in his life, and when the charges on both sides came to court, Seifer stood up in the witness box, stripped his shirt to show the scars of years of abuse, and told the judge in so many words that "if that bastard ever shows his face around my family again, I'll fucking kill him." Although the charges against him were cleared due to a ruling that he was defending the life of his adoptive sister, the judge ordered Seifer to undergo counseling for his traumatic childhood and hair-trigger temper, at the same time issuing a restraining order against Seigfried (likely halfway for the man's own safety). Seifer went to a few sessions, then gave up when it became apparent, to him at least, that the psychologist was just in it to drag him over the coals of his memories. Seigfried never showed up again in Seifer's life, and Seifer does not miss him in the slightest.
The posse graduated at 17, and with no money and no prospects, Seifer promptly enlisted in the military. Fuujin and Raijin, of course, tried to follow him; Fuujin was turned down for service due to her eye, but Seifer and Raijin (somehow managing to clear the psychological exam) were shipped off to basic, and from there to a specialized school for MPs, or military police. Seifer was just shy of 19 when his unit was activated and deployed overseas, first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. Though he saw some really evil things and the darkest side of human nature, he persevered and did his job to the best of his ability, managing to come through with nothing worse than a gunshot wound or two. Unfortunately, two weeks before the end of their first tour of duty, Seifer's convoy came under fire on the outskirts of Tikrit, which left two men dead and a third shot through the windpipe, who survived only due to the convoy medic's quick actions. Seifer, forgetting all discipline, charged the building alone and bodily dragged out two of the terrorists, who had thrown down their weapons, expecting that surrender would ensure they would only be arrested, no matter what they had done. Seifer came closer than the rest of his unit ever realized to becoming a cold-blooded murderer, standing over the prone terrorists with his rifle, eyes blazing and ready to wreak vengeance upon them for the deaths of his friends. It was Raijin that prevented Seifer from doing something worthy of a court martial, calming his buddy down from the brink of berserking. Seifer has a piece of paper on his wall for the incident, a 'Certificate of Achievement' for honorable actions and bravery under fire, but it was a bitter victory, and doesn't make his buddies any less dead.
Once Seifer was shipped back home, his time in active duty served, he applied to be transferred to the National Guard, and put in for his GI Bill funding to pay for a college education. Something worthwhile might as well come out of the nasty crap he put himself through, and half of his training was applicable as college credits anyway....
?Samples
Third Person:
for the umpteenth time since he had received it, SPC Seifer Almasy reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and drew out a creased and sand-stained letter, unfolded it almost reverently, and began to read with a crooked smirk upon his sunburned face. He knew this letter by heart, now; in Fuujin's crabbed and curt hand, she told him about home and how she missed him and Rai, and little things like how some little punk at the bookstore had hit on her ("I'm going to have to talk to that boy," Seifer always thought) before she had kicked him in the shin and stormed off ("Thatta girl, Fuu"). She wrote of the dog and the parents and the house, and how she was starting school soon, and how he could use her math textbooks when he got back from overseas. The leaves were turning red, she spoke, and it was starting to get cold at nights, enough so to make her breath steam like dragon-tails. Pretty soon it might even snow.
"I know you don't mean to tease me like that, Fuu," Seifer growled good-naturedly at the letter, laughter in his eyes even as he said it, "but that's just cruel."
"Who are you talking to?" LT Haynline peered over at him with one black brow cocked, the bandage on his neck purling and tugging at his skin. Seifer glanced over, smirked, and shook his head as he folded the letter and tucked it away, settling into his uncomfortable airport seat to wait for the long ride home.
"No one."
First Person:
Goddamn but I had forgotten how much I loved looking at trees. Or rocks. Or roads. Or anything that isn't fucking sand. And air conditioning. Man, I love air conditioning.
By the way, if you have never stepped off of a plane from Iraq with an enormous crowd waiting to applaud you for coming home, you should try it sometime. It's great for your ego.
Fuu met me and Rai at the airport with a great big hug, all flushed and embarassed, but happy we were home. I'm glad to be back, not just because people aren't shooting at me anymore - it didn't feel right over in the big sandbox without her there. Damn the military and their minimum requirements. But it's my own damn fault she has that eyepatch in the first place, so I can't exactly bitch at them.... Tomorrow I'll file my paperwork, get put in the Guard and live the weekend warrior life. Then I'll worry about finding a school that will take me, and getting a damn car, and finding out where the hell I'm going to live - it'd be kind of sad, for a combat veteran to still be living with his family. Maybe I can get enough funding for a dorm room once I get in college.
But all that is for tomorrow.
Tonight, I'm going to party.