[Biography] Matt Kennedy
CHARACTER NAME: Matt Kennedy
CHARACTER MEDIUM: Original
CHARACTER FANDOM: Original
AGE: mid-to-late-30's
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY:
Matt grew up in Indiana, in a small middle-class suburb on the outskrits of Fort Wayne. His father was a cop, his mother a school teacher. Between the two of them, the family -- including Matt and two brothers (Dave and Rick) -- had a fairly comfortable existence.
His childhood was filled with the usual adventures of young boys -- football, baseball, and soccer games abounded. Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers to pass a summer afternoon.
His grades were on the high side of average, his greatest fascination being how and why things worked. Like his father, he had a knack for investigation and seeing patterns. He was also instilled with the family values -- justice, integrity, and honor. Though his brother Dave enlisted in the Marines, he and Rick both grew up to become cops.
In college, he met the woman he would eventually marry, Annalisa Milani. The two ultimately settled on the west coast, where Matt kicked off his law-enforcement career. He rose up through the ranks of the San Francisco police department, ultimately achieving his Inspector's shield. Indeed, he was well on track to make Captain by the time he was forty.
Life fell apart, however, when a bust gone wrong took the life of his partner. One of the perps fired a weapon, killing Tate Michaels outright. Matt fired the shot that killed Tate's killer as he tried to flee. Though the IA investigation that inevitably followed cleared him of any wrong-doing, that didn't make dealing with Tate's death any easier.
The breaking point, however, came when he caught Annalisa in bed with a research assistant from work. The affair ended in divorce. 'Lisa claimed she couldn't live with the threat of danger that was always hanging over Matt's life, that she needed more stability in her life and, more than that, needed a man that was more available than Matt had been since his partner's death. "Sometimes, I think you loved him more than you ever loved me."
Ultimately, Matt ended up being the one that moved out. He quit the SFPD and moved back east, picking up the sheriff's job in the tiny mid-west town of Wyckshire. It looked like a great opportunity, really. He'd assume the sheriff job for the county at a pay rate that wasn't vastly different than what he was already making. True, the rate seemed a little high for that neck of the woods, but if they were willing to pay it, he was willing to take it. A change of scenery was just what the doctor ordered. And it would be nice to settle into the quiet routine of good, wholesome country living.
Which shows just how little he knew about Wyckshire.
On the surface, Wyckshire was a quaint country town as clean and cosy as Mayberry. Okay. Maybe Stepford, instead. Actually, Stepford wasn't at all a bad analogy. The place seemed perfect on the surface, but was pretty whacked underneath. There was a reason the sheriff got paid so well, and it wasn't because the county was particularly generous.
Take the little town of Eureka and mix it with Sunnydale, California, and you've got a pretty good guess at what Wyckshire was like. The town's economy was dominated by NuGenesis Biotechnica, a prominent scientific R&D corporation particularly known for its breakthroughs in medicine and robotics. The problem was that the company had some rogue elements to it, and Wyckshire was where they'd been dumped. Matt's job was to clean up whenever the lid blew off one crazy element or another.
He soon discovered he wasn't getting paid near enough.
It was a moot point, however. By the time the Stargate program had been revealed to the world, Matt had seen enough Weird Shit(TM) that the news there were aliens and a portal that could take you between worlds in a heartbeat just wasn't earth-shattering. (At most, it illicited a weary sigh and a dryly mumbled, "Naturally.")
GAMMA SITE BIOGRAPHY:
That Matt won himself a spot in a colony was a bit of a surprise. He hadn't really even realized he was in the running. But, when the call came to actually step through the gate, he looked at it as something of a vacation -- a kind of 'get out of jail free' card, his ticket out of the weirdness that was Wyckshire. After all, compared to that, how bad could an alien planet really be?
The first little while on Gamma was pretty busy. There were lots of things to keep him occupied, various ways he was able to pitch in and help the colony get settled. In time, however, as the novelty wore off and he settled into routine, he found himself getting a trifle bored.
As a rule, Matt had always been something of a workaholic. He liked being a cop. He liked throwing himself into his work, tracking down the bad guys, and catching them. (He /really/ liked the catching the bad guy part.) It was what had shattered his marriage, his workaholism. Since the colony was under martial law, however, there wasn't a whole lot of police work that he needed to do himself.
So, he worked generally in construction, helping other settlers build themselves homesteads -- though he never quite got around to doing any such thing for himself. It wasn't quite as much fun as being a cop (and he took much care not to be the guy at the top of the rafters, whenever he could; not so good with heights), but it definitely beat doing nothing. In fact, he took quite a bit of satisfaction from watching the projects finally come together in a meaningful way.
In his spare time, however, he organized a couple of "house league" sports tournaments -- particularly football. (The guy's totally nuts about football. Football, baseball, extreme sports, and Guinness. He misses Guinness.) Baseball in the summer, football in the fall and into the winter. Even a little hockey late in the winter season -- before the thaw.
Fact is, though, he's now at a point where, just about a year into life on the colony, he's really missing police work. He's a good guy. Genuinely. He really does want to do the right thing. He's not a complete boy scout, but he usually plays it by the book. That said, he can think fast on his feet and has been known to improvise quite creatively on occasion -- especially in matters of life or death.
He's also something of an adrenaline junkie. He likes the rush of danger. He's not particularly reckless, by any means, but if he hadn't become a cop, he'd likely have gone into some other emergency services or armed forces career. Police work suits him. Construction? Not so much.
Thus, he's now eying the news about the establishment of public emergency services and police departments with some degree of hope and interest.
WRITING SAMPLE:
See this post.
CHARACTER MEDIUM: Original
CHARACTER FANDOM: Original
AGE: mid-to-late-30's
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY:
Matt grew up in Indiana, in a small middle-class suburb on the outskrits of Fort Wayne. His father was a cop, his mother a school teacher. Between the two of them, the family -- including Matt and two brothers (Dave and Rick) -- had a fairly comfortable existence.
His childhood was filled with the usual adventures of young boys -- football, baseball, and soccer games abounded. Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers to pass a summer afternoon.
His grades were on the high side of average, his greatest fascination being how and why things worked. Like his father, he had a knack for investigation and seeing patterns. He was also instilled with the family values -- justice, integrity, and honor. Though his brother Dave enlisted in the Marines, he and Rick both grew up to become cops.
In college, he met the woman he would eventually marry, Annalisa Milani. The two ultimately settled on the west coast, where Matt kicked off his law-enforcement career. He rose up through the ranks of the San Francisco police department, ultimately achieving his Inspector's shield. Indeed, he was well on track to make Captain by the time he was forty.
Life fell apart, however, when a bust gone wrong took the life of his partner. One of the perps fired a weapon, killing Tate Michaels outright. Matt fired the shot that killed Tate's killer as he tried to flee. Though the IA investigation that inevitably followed cleared him of any wrong-doing, that didn't make dealing with Tate's death any easier.
The breaking point, however, came when he caught Annalisa in bed with a research assistant from work. The affair ended in divorce. 'Lisa claimed she couldn't live with the threat of danger that was always hanging over Matt's life, that she needed more stability in her life and, more than that, needed a man that was more available than Matt had been since his partner's death. "Sometimes, I think you loved him more than you ever loved me."
Ultimately, Matt ended up being the one that moved out. He quit the SFPD and moved back east, picking up the sheriff's job in the tiny mid-west town of Wyckshire. It looked like a great opportunity, really. He'd assume the sheriff job for the county at a pay rate that wasn't vastly different than what he was already making. True, the rate seemed a little high for that neck of the woods, but if they were willing to pay it, he was willing to take it. A change of scenery was just what the doctor ordered. And it would be nice to settle into the quiet routine of good, wholesome country living.
Which shows just how little he knew about Wyckshire.
On the surface, Wyckshire was a quaint country town as clean and cosy as Mayberry. Okay. Maybe Stepford, instead. Actually, Stepford wasn't at all a bad analogy. The place seemed perfect on the surface, but was pretty whacked underneath. There was a reason the sheriff got paid so well, and it wasn't because the county was particularly generous.
Take the little town of Eureka and mix it with Sunnydale, California, and you've got a pretty good guess at what Wyckshire was like. The town's economy was dominated by NuGenesis Biotechnica, a prominent scientific R&D corporation particularly known for its breakthroughs in medicine and robotics. The problem was that the company had some rogue elements to it, and Wyckshire was where they'd been dumped. Matt's job was to clean up whenever the lid blew off one crazy element or another.
He soon discovered he wasn't getting paid near enough.
It was a moot point, however. By the time the Stargate program had been revealed to the world, Matt had seen enough Weird Shit(TM) that the news there were aliens and a portal that could take you between worlds in a heartbeat just wasn't earth-shattering. (At most, it illicited a weary sigh and a dryly mumbled, "Naturally.")
GAMMA SITE BIOGRAPHY:
That Matt won himself a spot in a colony was a bit of a surprise. He hadn't really even realized he was in the running. But, when the call came to actually step through the gate, he looked at it as something of a vacation -- a kind of 'get out of jail free' card, his ticket out of the weirdness that was Wyckshire. After all, compared to that, how bad could an alien planet really be?
The first little while on Gamma was pretty busy. There were lots of things to keep him occupied, various ways he was able to pitch in and help the colony get settled. In time, however, as the novelty wore off and he settled into routine, he found himself getting a trifle bored.
As a rule, Matt had always been something of a workaholic. He liked being a cop. He liked throwing himself into his work, tracking down the bad guys, and catching them. (He /really/ liked the catching the bad guy part.) It was what had shattered his marriage, his workaholism. Since the colony was under martial law, however, there wasn't a whole lot of police work that he needed to do himself.
So, he worked generally in construction, helping other settlers build themselves homesteads -- though he never quite got around to doing any such thing for himself. It wasn't quite as much fun as being a cop (and he took much care not to be the guy at the top of the rafters, whenever he could; not so good with heights), but it definitely beat doing nothing. In fact, he took quite a bit of satisfaction from watching the projects finally come together in a meaningful way.
In his spare time, however, he organized a couple of "house league" sports tournaments -- particularly football. (The guy's totally nuts about football. Football, baseball, extreme sports, and Guinness. He misses Guinness.) Baseball in the summer, football in the fall and into the winter. Even a little hockey late in the winter season -- before the thaw.
Fact is, though, he's now at a point where, just about a year into life on the colony, he's really missing police work. He's a good guy. Genuinely. He really does want to do the right thing. He's not a complete boy scout, but he usually plays it by the book. That said, he can think fast on his feet and has been known to improvise quite creatively on occasion -- especially in matters of life or death.
He's also something of an adrenaline junkie. He likes the rush of danger. He's not particularly reckless, by any means, but if he hadn't become a cop, he'd likely have gone into some other emergency services or armed forces career. Police work suits him. Construction? Not so much.
Thus, he's now eying the news about the establishment of public emergency services and police departments with some degree of hope and interest.
WRITING SAMPLE:
See this post.