app - singularity_rpg
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Siri
OOC Journal: hearyourghost
Under 18? Nope!
Email/IM: coolercouleur [AIM] // hopeforrent[at]gmail[dot]com
Characters Played at Singularity: Sam Flynn
Character Information ;
Name: Gibson
Name of Canon: Tron: Evolution
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference:
+ Tron Wiki page on Tron: Evolution
+ Tron Wiki page on Gibson
Canon Point: Right after he and Anon decide to head back to Arjia City for some answers (aka riiiiight before he gets all virusified).
Setting: Note: some of this is copy/pasted from Sam's application, because it's relevant to both of them and it's sort of pointless to say the same thing but tweak phrasing slightly. I've deleted a few things that were mostly relevant to Sam and expanded a lot on things that are relevant to Gibson. If this isn't okay, though, please let me know!
Gibson lives in a computer! No, seriously. He lives in a computer.
The Grid is supposed to represent the functioning of an actual computer… unfortunately, it bears almost no real resemblance to how computers actually work. (It's amazing what you can justify with the Rule of Cool and a near-total lack of research.) The Grid pretty much looks like the real world, except it's mostly made of glass, chrome, and glowing white lights, and the only living things there are programs. It's permanently dark there, with most of the illumination coming from the lights that are part of the objects themselves, and it rains way more than it should. It's not the most cheerful place ever, to be perfectly honest. In addition to all of that happy-funtime stuff, time is extra-super-decompressed in the Grid, to the point where twenty years inside feels like approximately a thousand instead… so getting stuck inside is a bad idea. (Sorry, Kevin.)
The Grid is populated by humanoid programs, who are depicted as being unusually human for computer programs. They sleep, eat, fall in love, and party just like humans do, although they're made of pixels rather than flesh and blood. Programs--or at least those who believe in Users, which have become fewer and farther between since Clu came to power--see humans as gods, and Kevin Flynn is the most revered human of all. He created the Grid, which makes him capital-G-God to the programs that still believe. (There was a program depicted actually praying as Kevin Flynn walked by; it's pretty safe to say that the filmmakers weren't trying to make the religious parallels in this movie subtle.) ISOs have a more complicated relationship with Flynn, since they weren't directly created by him, but as a whole they're pretty respectful of the Grid's Creator. This is likely to only apply to Flynn, however, and reactions aren't consistent; programs from Arjia City are more likely to worship Flynn than, say, Bostrumites, but in general they're fairly respectful.
The history of the Grid goes a little something like this: in the early 1980s, Kevin Flynn created a world inside a computer, which he dubbed the Grid, via the use of creative programming and a possibly-stolen laser capable of transferring objects from the real world into a computer--and vice versa. (This is, honestly, one of those things you've just got to roll with in order for the plot of anything Tron-related to make any sense whatsoever.) He was able to enter and exit the Grid using this super-special laser, and used his powers as Creator to build a really super-awesome digital world. He imported Tron, a security program written by his friend Alan Bradley, from another system, and created Clu, a program "in his own image", to be the Grid's system administrator when Flynn wasn't around. Clu's directive was to create the perfect system, which proves to be a very poor choice of words on Flynn's part and totally comes back to bite him in the ass later.
The three of them then stepped back and began to let the Grid really run, and everything was bright and shiny and awesome for a while.
And then, a miracle happened! Programs called ISOs, or isomorphic algorithms, spontaneously generated in the Sea of Simulation. Unlike the other programs on the Grid, who were thereafter known as "Basics", ISOs had no specifically-programmed directives, which made them essentially independent operators. Although ISOs attempted to integrate into the society of the Grid, and Kevin Flynn encouraged both ISOs and Basics to get along for the good of the Grid as a whole, tensions between the two groups increased drastically as time went on. Gibson, for example, was essentially forced out of his job in System Utilities due to a "violent confrontation" between himself and a couple of his Basic coworkers--which mostly stemmed from their xenophobia and jealousy and his total inability to just let things go. As a result of that incident (and although it's not terribly important, Gibson won that fight, thank you very much), Gibson left the City and joined a group of ISOs living in the uncivilized Outlands called the Bostrum Colony.
The Bostrumites are a group of ISOs who were trying to shield themselves from xenophobic abuse by essentially picking up their toys and moving to the middle of the wilderness. They have green circuitry, which distinguishes themselves both from Basics and from other ISOs, and they're prone to some rather hardcore body modification. This helps them survive in the harsh conditions of the Outlands, and also helps further delineate them from normal programs. Although the Bostrumites are a rather extreme reaction to ISO/Basic tension, and they're not exactly great in number, the fact that they exist at all attests to the fact that ISOs and Basics were not getting along like they should have been.
In a last-ditch effort to bridge the gap between the two communities, Radia, an ISO spiritual leader, was tapped to become Clu's co-sysadmin. Clu… really didn't take kindly to that idea.
Clu did not approve of having such unpredictable and inherently imperfect programs screwing around with his perfect system. (Besides, they were stealing away all of Daddy's love--not that he'll ever admit that was a reason.) So, what's a frustrated system administrator to do? If you guessed 'genocide'… well, you'd be right! Unfortunately, he had to come up with a cause first, in order to make his actions more acceptable to the general public.
In order to facilitate his Grid-conquering plans, Clu arranged for an ISO political leader named Jalen to be fake-killed and then reprogrammed him into a virus called Abraxas. Abraxas then started "spreading his pain" throughout the system--and coincidentally ended up attacking areas where ISOs lived. (What a staggering coincidence!)
As a direct result of Abraxas' attack on the system, Clu initiated the Purge, a systematic destruction of all the ISOs on the Grid, and basically kick-started his bid for absolute control over the Grid. He had been secretly reprogramming dissenting programs in order to create his own special neon-stormtrooper army, which made taking over a lot easier, and… well, Clu basically turned into Computer Hitler in an effort to follow his directives. He systematically destroyed ISO communities across the Grid--including Arjia City, one of the ISOs' main strongholds, and the Bostrum Colony, where Gibson lives--Clu reprogrammed Tron into his right-hand enforcer Rinzler, although he did it secretly in order to let Flynn think Tron was dead, and forced Kevin Flynn into hiding.
Gibson actually smuggled Flynn out of Tron City himself, and although he managed to get Flynn to safety in the Bostrum Colony, he ended up caught and was forced onto the Game Grid. He was rescued by a system monitor named Anon, and the two of them went on an adventure to find Flynn together… at least until Gibson ended up infected by Abraxas, anyway. That sort of put a damper on the adventuring part of things--mostly because Gibson ends up dead.
Anyway, Anon eventually finds Flynn, fights Clu, fights Abraxas--and wins by essentially dropping a building on the virus--saves the last living ISO, and... dies a rather ignominious death of being squished by a Recognizer at the very end of the game. (Basically, if you weren't in Tron: Legacy and you were in this game? You died.)
Flynn and Quorra, the aforementioned last ISO, have been hiding in the Outlands--a sort of rocky, wilderness-type place far away from most of the Grid's more civilized aspects--for a really, really long time at the start of the movie.
Personality: In the world of Tron, programs' personalities are often at least partially defined by their functions. Security programs tend to be hyper-loyal and protective of others, programs designed to create the perfect system are usually megalomaniacal dictators… you get the idea. Although this idea applies most strongly to Basics, or programs created to have a specific function, it also provides some explanation for ISOs' behavior as well. Radia, one of the spiritual and political leaders of the ISOs, is appropriately diplomatic and almost motherly towards her charges, while the ISO-turned-virus Abraxas goes from a leader trying to create peace between the ISOs and Basics to a virus obsessed with spreading pain and torturing other programs as a result of his corruption.
Gibson doesn't really do any of that.
Before he became a member of the Bostrum Governing Council, he was an energy transference engineer in System Utilities--and neither of those jobs require anyone to be as much of an unabashed smartass as Gibson proves to be during the course of the game. (It might actually be a detriment to those jobs, to be perfectly honest, but bad ideas have never stopped Gibson before.) He has an almost compulsive need to snark at anyone and anything around him, even when it's probably to his advantage to keep his mouth shut. He's also got a couple issues keeping his temper under control, as evidenced by the fact that his response to xenophobia and jealousy in the workplace is to start--and then win--a fistfight. (He then, understandably, lost his job. His response to that? Leaving Tron City entirely in order to join a tiny group of disaffected ISOs who live in the middle of the Outlands called the Bostrum Colony. In case it wasn't already obvious, he's also got a dramatic streak a mile wide.)
His first function, System Utilities engineer, has had more of an impact on his thought processes than he'd like to admit, however. He's very pragmatic and doesn't have much patience for philosophical faffing about, and he's not afraid to do what he needs to in order to get the job done; this is a program who "put down" his infected friends without much hesitation, after all. As a result of this innate pragmatism, he's pretty good at the Indy Ploy, too. He couldn't have possibly known that Anon was coming to the Game Grid to rescue him, but he still managed to parlay that into a: conning Anon into taking his place in the Games and b: stealing a Recognizer to rescue Anon and escape to the Bostrum Colony to meet up with Flynn again. (Yeah, his version of a rescue was pretty much dropping a flying tank into the middle of the newly-lethal gladiatorial games. Subtlety has never really been one of his strong suits--and there are those dramatic tendencies kicking in again.)
Gibson is also, as far as we know, the only program to ever actively resist infection by Abraxas… and he does it pretty much through sheer stubbornness. He does not give up, ever--even when it would be a really good idea for him to do so. It's implied that resisting the infection actually made things more painful for Gibson, but he refused to give in... and, unsurprisingly, he'll be just as stubborn about things that aren't quite as life-or-death.
He's what could probably be best described as as "agnostic" with regards to Users in general. For someone as practical as Gibson, it's stupid to deny the fact that the Creator pops down to visit every couple of cycles--although he knows a few Bostrumites do that; frankly, Gibson is one of the few utterly sane voices in a colony full of instability and crazy--but he won't go so far as to actively worship Flynn as most of the other programs on the Grid do. He's happy to stay out of the discussion entirely--until it looks like the Creator's going to die, anyway, in which case he's going to make sure the guy who can undo and remake his entire world doesn't get killed. It's only practical, really. That position makes him almost dangerously moderate compared to the rest of the Bostrumites… though that doesn't actually say much when you realize that most (if not all) of the other Bostrumites are essentially the Grid's equivalent of radical separatist movements. At least Gibson is capable of dealing with Basics on a fairly rational basis, which is better than many of his compatriots. (This doesn't stop him from thinking that he's inherently better than they are, of course, but he can manage to tone down the superiority and have a civil--albeit snarky--conversation if he needs to.)
The real world is going to be hella confusing to Gibson. First of all, the fact that the Arjians were right about Flynn's "real world" even existing--because really, he thought they were mostly religious loonies with a very tenuous grasp on reality, with a few rare exceptions--is going to blow his mind. The real world isn't exactly the heaven the Arjians thought it would be, either, but that's really a minor detail at this point. Because of his opinions on Arjians and their belief system, he hasn't paid enough attention to Radia's oracular pronouncements to really learn much about the real world. (He likes Radia, and he respects her as a leader, but he draws the line at listening to crazytalk about a perfect world outside the Grid.) The residential zones of Sacrosanct will be mostly familiar to him, just because he used to live in a major city, but the Garden Zones? He has no idea what's going on with those. At all.
Abilities and Weaknesses:
Abilities
+ Gibson isn't really operating on his original source code any more, although that's not immediately obvious unless you're really well-versed in ISO culture. Most of these changes are just what's considered "standard" for long-term survival in the Outlands, such as increased energy efficiency and better night vision, although he's far less modified than most other Bostrumites. One or two changes, however, are cosmetic, like the green circuitry lines and the markings on his chest. (Besides, those abs don't come standard.)
+ He's got Operator-class privileges on both lightcycles and Recognizers (also known as the big flying tank-y things), which… may come in handy at some point. Possibly.
+ Although we never actually see it in-canon, because he's too busy using his identity disc and/or being infected by a virus, Gibson is supposedly an expert in baton combat.
+ Again, although we never actually see this in-canon, he used to be an energy transference engineer--which apparently translates into being good at redirecting and storing energy. It's anyone guess as to what that actually means, since canon is really non-specific as to what that is, but at least it's there.
Weaknesses
+ Again, he isn't quite running on the normal ISO source code any more. Any attempts to fix him will be... interesting, to say the least--and better night vision is a bitch when there's actual sunlight around you. (On the bright side, better energy efficiency is likely to be extremely helpful on Sacrosanct, which doesn't seem to have any readily available sources of Grid energy.)
+ According to gameplay, he really kind of sucks at disc combat. (Part of this is probably the combat AI's fault, but that doesn't change the fact that he is demonstrably unhelpful in a fight if he's using his identity disc.)
+ He also has basically no idea how this world works. He's not naive or innocent, just... extremely inexperienced with the User world.
Inventory:
+ one (1) set of clothing, minus a shirt
+ one (1) identity disc
+ one (1) baton, capable of generating either a lightcycle or a combat baton
+ one (1) set of fantastic abs.
Appearance: In the real world, he's probably about six feet tall with a medium build and black hair. His eyes are an unnaturally pale gray--even for programs, who generally have really pale gray eyes anyway--but beyond that there's nothing to immediately mark him as anything other than human… if you ignore the identity disc stuck to his back, but hey. Minor detail, right?
More unusually, he has green circuitry lines on his clothing rather than the customary white, blue, or orangey-red. This blatantly labels him as a member of the Bostrum Colony, who not only want to be visually distinct from Basics, but from other ISOs as well. (Bostrumites have a rather alarming tendency to be special snowflakes, as it turns out.) But really, the most interesting thing about his appearance is probably his complete and utter refusal to wear a shirt. Although theoretically it's just to show off the tattoos near his neck, which also obviously mark him as an ISO… he's just vain enough to know he's pretty attractive, and hell if he's going to hide those abs under a real shirt. (He does usually wear a jacket, though.) He's pretty much the game's designated fanservice--and he does an excellent job of it, too.
Have a screenshot, which is the closest thing to a full-body picture he gets during the whole entire game. (And here's a very melodramatic picture of his PB, Michael Trevino. The rendered cutscenes in that game sucked, okay.)
Age: 150 cycles, or a little over two in User years. As a Beta-class ISO, he's young for a program, especially compared to most other ISOs and pretty much all of the Basics. He looks like he's in his early-to-mid twenties, however… which is still pretty young for a program, to be honest.
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? n/a
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? n/a
And What Did You Score? n/a
Samples ;
Log Sample: Have a bunch of dear_mun threads. Linked with mod permission!
Network Sample: [audio // video]
[The audio feed clicks on and off a couple of times, almost as if the person on the other end were pulling it in an attempt to get it off his arm. Coincidentally, this is exactly what's happening.] --oes this thing--stupid--
[The audio stops for good after a couple seconds of transmission, followed by a short pause. After that, however, the video feed turns on to reveal a fairly young-looking, black-haired man backed into a very dimly lit corner somewhere. Like way too many of the recent arrivals, he also has circuit lines on his clothes, although his are green--and partially obscured by the hood pushed down around his shoulders. He looks both rather exasperated and perfectly comfortable in the near-total lack of light, and he doesn't seem to realize that other people might not be able to see him as well as he can see them.]
Here we go. Okay, can someone point me in the direction of the nearest sysadmin--or whoever thought the giant light source in the sky was a good idea, because I think we need to have a talk about their idea of energy efficiency.
Seriously, why did that seem like a good idea to anyone?
[Other questions, like "what's going on?" and "why am I here?", can wait until whoever's in charge here has turned off the sun.]
Your Nickname: Siri
OOC Journal: hearyourghost
Under 18? Nope!
Email/IM: coolercouleur [AIM] // hopeforrent[at]gmail[dot]com
Characters Played at Singularity: Sam Flynn
Character Information ;
Name: Gibson
Name of Canon: Tron: Evolution
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference:
+ Tron Wiki page on Tron: Evolution
+ Tron Wiki page on Gibson
Canon Point: Right after he and Anon decide to head back to Arjia City for some answers (aka riiiiight before he gets all virusified).
Setting: Note: some of this is copy/pasted from Sam's application, because it's relevant to both of them and it's sort of pointless to say the same thing but tweak phrasing slightly. I've deleted a few things that were mostly relevant to Sam and expanded a lot on things that are relevant to Gibson. If this isn't okay, though, please let me know!
Gibson lives in a computer! No, seriously. He lives in a computer.
The Grid is supposed to represent the functioning of an actual computer… unfortunately, it bears almost no real resemblance to how computers actually work. (It's amazing what you can justify with the Rule of Cool and a near-total lack of research.) The Grid pretty much looks like the real world, except it's mostly made of glass, chrome, and glowing white lights, and the only living things there are programs. It's permanently dark there, with most of the illumination coming from the lights that are part of the objects themselves, and it rains way more than it should. It's not the most cheerful place ever, to be perfectly honest. In addition to all of that happy-funtime stuff, time is extra-super-decompressed in the Grid, to the point where twenty years inside feels like approximately a thousand instead… so getting stuck inside is a bad idea. (Sorry, Kevin.)
The Grid is populated by humanoid programs, who are depicted as being unusually human for computer programs. They sleep, eat, fall in love, and party just like humans do, although they're made of pixels rather than flesh and blood. Programs--or at least those who believe in Users, which have become fewer and farther between since Clu came to power--see humans as gods, and Kevin Flynn is the most revered human of all. He created the Grid, which makes him capital-G-God to the programs that still believe. (There was a program depicted actually praying as Kevin Flynn walked by; it's pretty safe to say that the filmmakers weren't trying to make the religious parallels in this movie subtle.) ISOs have a more complicated relationship with Flynn, since they weren't directly created by him, but as a whole they're pretty respectful of the Grid's Creator. This is likely to only apply to Flynn, however, and reactions aren't consistent; programs from Arjia City are more likely to worship Flynn than, say, Bostrumites, but in general they're fairly respectful.
The history of the Grid goes a little something like this: in the early 1980s, Kevin Flynn created a world inside a computer, which he dubbed the Grid, via the use of creative programming and a possibly-stolen laser capable of transferring objects from the real world into a computer--and vice versa. (This is, honestly, one of those things you've just got to roll with in order for the plot of anything Tron-related to make any sense whatsoever.) He was able to enter and exit the Grid using this super-special laser, and used his powers as Creator to build a really super-awesome digital world. He imported Tron, a security program written by his friend Alan Bradley, from another system, and created Clu, a program "in his own image", to be the Grid's system administrator when Flynn wasn't around. Clu's directive was to create the perfect system, which proves to be a very poor choice of words on Flynn's part and totally comes back to bite him in the ass later.
The three of them then stepped back and began to let the Grid really run, and everything was bright and shiny and awesome for a while.
And then, a miracle happened! Programs called ISOs, or isomorphic algorithms, spontaneously generated in the Sea of Simulation. Unlike the other programs on the Grid, who were thereafter known as "Basics", ISOs had no specifically-programmed directives, which made them essentially independent operators. Although ISOs attempted to integrate into the society of the Grid, and Kevin Flynn encouraged both ISOs and Basics to get along for the good of the Grid as a whole, tensions between the two groups increased drastically as time went on. Gibson, for example, was essentially forced out of his job in System Utilities due to a "violent confrontation" between himself and a couple of his Basic coworkers--which mostly stemmed from their xenophobia and jealousy and his total inability to just let things go. As a result of that incident (and although it's not terribly important, Gibson won that fight, thank you very much), Gibson left the City and joined a group of ISOs living in the uncivilized Outlands called the Bostrum Colony.
The Bostrumites are a group of ISOs who were trying to shield themselves from xenophobic abuse by essentially picking up their toys and moving to the middle of the wilderness. They have green circuitry, which distinguishes themselves both from Basics and from other ISOs, and they're prone to some rather hardcore body modification. This helps them survive in the harsh conditions of the Outlands, and also helps further delineate them from normal programs. Although the Bostrumites are a rather extreme reaction to ISO/Basic tension, and they're not exactly great in number, the fact that they exist at all attests to the fact that ISOs and Basics were not getting along like they should have been.
In a last-ditch effort to bridge the gap between the two communities, Radia, an ISO spiritual leader, was tapped to become Clu's co-sysadmin. Clu… really didn't take kindly to that idea.
Clu did not approve of having such unpredictable and inherently imperfect programs screwing around with his perfect system. (Besides, they were stealing away all of Daddy's love--not that he'll ever admit that was a reason.) So, what's a frustrated system administrator to do? If you guessed 'genocide'… well, you'd be right! Unfortunately, he had to come up with a cause first, in order to make his actions more acceptable to the general public.
In order to facilitate his Grid-conquering plans, Clu arranged for an ISO political leader named Jalen to be fake-killed and then reprogrammed him into a virus called Abraxas. Abraxas then started "spreading his pain" throughout the system--and coincidentally ended up attacking areas where ISOs lived. (What a staggering coincidence!)
As a direct result of Abraxas' attack on the system, Clu initiated the Purge, a systematic destruction of all the ISOs on the Grid, and basically kick-started his bid for absolute control over the Grid. He had been secretly reprogramming dissenting programs in order to create his own special neon-stormtrooper army, which made taking over a lot easier, and… well, Clu basically turned into Computer Hitler in an effort to follow his directives. He systematically destroyed ISO communities across the Grid--including Arjia City, one of the ISOs' main strongholds, and the Bostrum Colony, where Gibson lives--Clu reprogrammed Tron into his right-hand enforcer Rinzler, although he did it secretly in order to let Flynn think Tron was dead, and forced Kevin Flynn into hiding.
Gibson actually smuggled Flynn out of Tron City himself, and although he managed to get Flynn to safety in the Bostrum Colony, he ended up caught and was forced onto the Game Grid. He was rescued by a system monitor named Anon, and the two of them went on an adventure to find Flynn together… at least until Gibson ended up infected by Abraxas, anyway. That sort of put a damper on the adventuring part of things--mostly because Gibson ends up dead.
Anyway, Anon eventually finds Flynn, fights Clu, fights Abraxas--and wins by essentially dropping a building on the virus--saves the last living ISO, and... dies a rather ignominious death of being squished by a Recognizer at the very end of the game. (Basically, if you weren't in Tron: Legacy and you were in this game? You died.)
Flynn and Quorra, the aforementioned last ISO, have been hiding in the Outlands--a sort of rocky, wilderness-type place far away from most of the Grid's more civilized aspects--for a really, really long time at the start of the movie.
Personality: In the world of Tron, programs' personalities are often at least partially defined by their functions. Security programs tend to be hyper-loyal and protective of others, programs designed to create the perfect system are usually megalomaniacal dictators… you get the idea. Although this idea applies most strongly to Basics, or programs created to have a specific function, it also provides some explanation for ISOs' behavior as well. Radia, one of the spiritual and political leaders of the ISOs, is appropriately diplomatic and almost motherly towards her charges, while the ISO-turned-virus Abraxas goes from a leader trying to create peace between the ISOs and Basics to a virus obsessed with spreading pain and torturing other programs as a result of his corruption.
Gibson doesn't really do any of that.
Before he became a member of the Bostrum Governing Council, he was an energy transference engineer in System Utilities--and neither of those jobs require anyone to be as much of an unabashed smartass as Gibson proves to be during the course of the game. (It might actually be a detriment to those jobs, to be perfectly honest, but bad ideas have never stopped Gibson before.) He has an almost compulsive need to snark at anyone and anything around him, even when it's probably to his advantage to keep his mouth shut. He's also got a couple issues keeping his temper under control, as evidenced by the fact that his response to xenophobia and jealousy in the workplace is to start--and then win--a fistfight. (He then, understandably, lost his job. His response to that? Leaving Tron City entirely in order to join a tiny group of disaffected ISOs who live in the middle of the Outlands called the Bostrum Colony. In case it wasn't already obvious, he's also got a dramatic streak a mile wide.)
His first function, System Utilities engineer, has had more of an impact on his thought processes than he'd like to admit, however. He's very pragmatic and doesn't have much patience for philosophical faffing about, and he's not afraid to do what he needs to in order to get the job done; this is a program who "put down" his infected friends without much hesitation, after all. As a result of this innate pragmatism, he's pretty good at the Indy Ploy, too. He couldn't have possibly known that Anon was coming to the Game Grid to rescue him, but he still managed to parlay that into a: conning Anon into taking his place in the Games and b: stealing a Recognizer to rescue Anon and escape to the Bostrum Colony to meet up with Flynn again. (Yeah, his version of a rescue was pretty much dropping a flying tank into the middle of the newly-lethal gladiatorial games. Subtlety has never really been one of his strong suits--and there are those dramatic tendencies kicking in again.)
Gibson is also, as far as we know, the only program to ever actively resist infection by Abraxas… and he does it pretty much through sheer stubbornness. He does not give up, ever--even when it would be a really good idea for him to do so. It's implied that resisting the infection actually made things more painful for Gibson, but he refused to give in... and, unsurprisingly, he'll be just as stubborn about things that aren't quite as life-or-death.
He's what could probably be best described as as "agnostic" with regards to Users in general. For someone as practical as Gibson, it's stupid to deny the fact that the Creator pops down to visit every couple of cycles--although he knows a few Bostrumites do that; frankly, Gibson is one of the few utterly sane voices in a colony full of instability and crazy--but he won't go so far as to actively worship Flynn as most of the other programs on the Grid do. He's happy to stay out of the discussion entirely--until it looks like the Creator's going to die, anyway, in which case he's going to make sure the guy who can undo and remake his entire world doesn't get killed. It's only practical, really. That position makes him almost dangerously moderate compared to the rest of the Bostrumites… though that doesn't actually say much when you realize that most (if not all) of the other Bostrumites are essentially the Grid's equivalent of radical separatist movements. At least Gibson is capable of dealing with Basics on a fairly rational basis, which is better than many of his compatriots. (This doesn't stop him from thinking that he's inherently better than they are, of course, but he can manage to tone down the superiority and have a civil--albeit snarky--conversation if he needs to.)
The real world is going to be hella confusing to Gibson. First of all, the fact that the Arjians were right about Flynn's "real world" even existing--because really, he thought they were mostly religious loonies with a very tenuous grasp on reality, with a few rare exceptions--is going to blow his mind. The real world isn't exactly the heaven the Arjians thought it would be, either, but that's really a minor detail at this point. Because of his opinions on Arjians and their belief system, he hasn't paid enough attention to Radia's oracular pronouncements to really learn much about the real world. (He likes Radia, and he respects her as a leader, but he draws the line at listening to crazytalk about a perfect world outside the Grid.) The residential zones of Sacrosanct will be mostly familiar to him, just because he used to live in a major city, but the Garden Zones? He has no idea what's going on with those. At all.
Abilities and Weaknesses:
Abilities
+ Gibson isn't really operating on his original source code any more, although that's not immediately obvious unless you're really well-versed in ISO culture. Most of these changes are just what's considered "standard" for long-term survival in the Outlands, such as increased energy efficiency and better night vision, although he's far less modified than most other Bostrumites. One or two changes, however, are cosmetic, like the green circuitry lines and the markings on his chest. (Besides, those abs don't come standard.)
+ He's got Operator-class privileges on both lightcycles and Recognizers (also known as the big flying tank-y things), which… may come in handy at some point. Possibly.
+ Although we never actually see it in-canon, because he's too busy using his identity disc and/or being infected by a virus, Gibson is supposedly an expert in baton combat.
+ Again, although we never actually see this in-canon, he used to be an energy transference engineer--which apparently translates into being good at redirecting and storing energy. It's anyone guess as to what that actually means, since canon is really non-specific as to what that is, but at least it's there.
Weaknesses
+ Again, he isn't quite running on the normal ISO source code any more. Any attempts to fix him will be... interesting, to say the least--and better night vision is a bitch when there's actual sunlight around you. (On the bright side, better energy efficiency is likely to be extremely helpful on Sacrosanct, which doesn't seem to have any readily available sources of Grid energy.)
+ According to gameplay, he really kind of sucks at disc combat. (Part of this is probably the combat AI's fault, but that doesn't change the fact that he is demonstrably unhelpful in a fight if he's using his identity disc.)
+ He also has basically no idea how this world works. He's not naive or innocent, just... extremely inexperienced with the User world.
Inventory:
+ one (1) set of clothing, minus a shirt
+ one (1) identity disc
+ one (1) baton, capable of generating either a lightcycle or a combat baton
+ one (1) set of fantastic abs.
Appearance: In the real world, he's probably about six feet tall with a medium build and black hair. His eyes are an unnaturally pale gray--even for programs, who generally have really pale gray eyes anyway--but beyond that there's nothing to immediately mark him as anything other than human… if you ignore the identity disc stuck to his back, but hey. Minor detail, right?
More unusually, he has green circuitry lines on his clothing rather than the customary white, blue, or orangey-red. This blatantly labels him as a member of the Bostrum Colony, who not only want to be visually distinct from Basics, but from other ISOs as well. (Bostrumites have a rather alarming tendency to be special snowflakes, as it turns out.) But really, the most interesting thing about his appearance is probably his complete and utter refusal to wear a shirt. Although theoretically it's just to show off the tattoos near his neck, which also obviously mark him as an ISO… he's just vain enough to know he's pretty attractive, and hell if he's going to hide those abs under a real shirt. (He does usually wear a jacket, though.) He's pretty much the game's designated fanservice--and he does an excellent job of it, too.
Have a screenshot, which is the closest thing to a full-body picture he gets during the whole entire game. (And here's a very melodramatic picture of his PB, Michael Trevino. The rendered cutscenes in that game sucked, okay.)
Age: 150 cycles, or a little over two in User years. As a Beta-class ISO, he's young for a program, especially compared to most other ISOs and pretty much all of the Basics. He looks like he's in his early-to-mid twenties, however… which is still pretty young for a program, to be honest.
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? n/a
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? n/a
And What Did You Score? n/a
Samples ;
Log Sample: Have a bunch of dear_mun threads. Linked with mod permission!
Network Sample: [audio // video]
[The audio feed clicks on and off a couple of times, almost as if the person on the other end were pulling it in an attempt to get it off his arm. Coincidentally, this is exactly what's happening.] --oes this thing--stupid--
[The audio stops for good after a couple seconds of transmission, followed by a short pause. After that, however, the video feed turns on to reveal a fairly young-looking, black-haired man backed into a very dimly lit corner somewhere. Like way too many of the recent arrivals, he also has circuit lines on his clothes, although his are green--and partially obscured by the hood pushed down around his shoulders. He looks both rather exasperated and perfectly comfortable in the near-total lack of light, and he doesn't seem to realize that other people might not be able to see him as well as he can see them.]
Here we go. Okay, can someone point me in the direction of the nearest sysadmin--or whoever thought the giant light source in the sky was a good idea, because I think we need to have a talk about their idea of energy efficiency.
Seriously, why did that seem like a good idea to anyone?
[Other questions, like "what's going on?" and "why am I here?", can wait until whoever's in charge here has turned off the sun.]