ATARAXION: application

[mistercocks]

PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Zero.
OOC Journal: expletives
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: Negatory.
Email + IM: birdslut@gmail + tsunderemod@aim
Characters Played at Ataraxion: n/a

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name:

Coby "Vreille" Cox.

Canon:

Original.

Original or Alternate Universe:

n/a

Canon Point:

Rather early in his planned development.

Number:

121.

Setting:

There are (at least) four cities in North America that just can't seem to stay put: Dogtown, Pleasantville, Skidmark, and Sundberg. Each has a different goal: Tropes, normalcy, strangeness, and vice. Some cursory information can be found here.

Sundberg has a way of getting under your skin, getting into your brain. It reaches into the controls centers of your brain and turns all the volume knobs up to eleven. It's a city that comes alive at night and spends most of the day recovering from the ensuing headache. It is all the worst parts of Manhattan, Vegas and Montreal tossed in a blender, served chilled with a splash of tequila and a little paper umbrella.

Okay, okay, enough of that. To clarify, Sundberg is a city that feeds on vice, and there just seems to be something in the air that'll turn you into a sinner. It's rife with addiction and unhappiness, but no one ever talks about it or seems to even know. It's not immediate, either. It takes a while to take effect, but eventually, it turns everyone into a miscreant.

But well, hey, at least you'll have fun on the way down, right?

Outside of these cities, the world is exactly the same as ours. A lot of people don't even know the towns exist -- and those that do don't tend to think there's any funny business surrounding them. Neither do the residents, really. The city might wander, but it also has an effect on the people who interact with it that stops them from thinking to hard about it. Muse too long on what state to put on your address, and you'll find yourself with a splitting migraine. Mail addressed to Sundberg arrives there, though not always on time.

You can live a normal life within any of the cities: but it will always be tainted. In Sundberg, this means sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Until you die, be it tragically early of an overdose or startlingly late despite your lifestyle. It's all up to you and, just a little, up to lady luck.

History:

Vreille was born one Coby Cox, son of San Diego native Mandy. He was half white trash, half sketchy one night stand, and Mandy provided the former part. Most of his formative years were spent being the latchkey kid to a small bungalow (or trailer, for a trying period in his prepubescent years), watching cartoons and eating Kraft Dinner while his mom brought back the latest man to fuck one room over from his seat. The volume knob on their television got quite the workout, through the years. And even when he had the television on for white noise, Coby could often be found reading some beaten up paperback he'd taken home from the school library. He had something of an affinity for fiction, it seemed. He got through elementary and middle school like this, always sort of wondering where it was that stuff happened.

Coby always wanted to live in a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Where things happened. Live somewhere, anywhere that shit happened to people. Where the cops got called on parties, that your neighbours woke you up at four in the morning to borrow latex gloves and wouldn't explain why, where at least if you had to bake in the heat you could be baked while you did.

And, well, sometimes these things just work out.

In his third year of high school, Coby told his at-the-time boyfriend that he 'had to get out of this dead-end town, or he'd go out of his fucking gourd'. Anything had to be better than sitting around listening to his mom complain about her soaps for another day. Being the one with the driver's license, it was Dan's job to distract him for a weekend.

"Well, Boogeyman's playing the next town over tomorrow night, if you want to go."

The two drove to stay overnight in Sundberg, and got separated along the way. A concert, a party, an afterparty... Dan drove back in the morning without him, and well, Coby was actually pretty okay with that. One night at a party in Sundberg had already been the best of his life, and he wasn't too keen to bail already. He settled in, and decided pretty quickly that he'd need a name change. In part because he wanted to be disassociated with his identity up until this point, and in part because. Well, because he was perfectly aware that 'Coby Cox' totally sounds like a porn star name. People can stop saying it now, he gets it.

"Câlice, c'est pas vrai... C'est pratiquement encore un enfant... "

His first morning in town, he woke up next to a hungover Quebecois, who muttered something to the effect of 'Shit, he's a kid, this can't be real', and picked up on part of the exclamation. Not that he actually... managed to spell it right, or anything like that, but 'Vreille' seemed good enough as anything to call himself. He tells people his parents were European.

By night, he led an exciting life or partying hard, while by day he... Slept off the hangovers, mostly. Work was something that happened in the evening hours, when people with better scheduling capabilities than he felt hungry. Vreille picked up a job waiting tables in a bistro, largely because his only skills were 'looking pretty', 'sense of balance' and 'not complaining about a uniform'.

Eventually, he ran into one Marc Ewing, and the two hit it off. Vreille landed himself steady housing (not to mention somebody to let him in when he came back home sloshed and couldn't find his keys), and Marc got himself a perpetual mess machine and a steady supply of discount weed. It was a pretty good setup, all things considered, and worked well as far as stability (relatively speaking, for Sundberg). He had two jobs, a circle of... acquaintances, and the few rare friends to boot. Halse and Fawn were the most frequent partners in crime, and where you found one you usually found the other two.

Roughly a year into this arrangement, Vreille found himself lounging against the exterior wall of The Watering Hole and sucking nicotine into his lungs, as he often found himself at one in the morning. One Leland Armenhagan had the misfortune of walking in and asking him for the time, and the greater misfortune of awkwardly refusing Vreille's solicitations.

Because nobody in Sundberg rolls up to a bar past midnight to pick up their daughter. Especially not Halse, who was way too old to be this guy's kid.

And to put things delicately, Vreille doesn't take 'no' very well, answerwise. Put not so delicately, there was absolutely no way that his ego was taking a hit like having some knowitall square say 'no' to him and then try to take his friend home.

"Hey, Vreille! Have you met my dad?"

Unfortunately, Armenhagan was Halse's father (she was adopted after her birth parents got into a bit of trouble). And, given that Halse considered Vreille one of her best friends, meant that avoiding him was going to be difficult. For Leland, anyway.

Cue several weeks of seeking him out at bars and running into him at soirées, and maybe even warming to him a little. Vreille eventually broke down his defenses, and the two entered something that would vaguely resemble a relationship, if you tilted your head and squinted. It was pretty casual, at least from Vreille's point of view.

At least, it was supposed to be. Contrary to what he'd have you believe, Vreille is somewhat capable of feelings, and attachments. And while he was busy telling himself otherwise, Marc was getting rather involved with a lovely young lady named Cal, who needed a place to stay. Since the lease was in his name, and not Vreille's, he kind of called the shots in regards to who slept in his spare bedroom. Keeping Vreille around has upsides, but Cal is just so pretty.

So Vreille was out one place to sleep, without too many options as backups. He was about to show up on Hagan's door and demand his squatter's rights, when he blinked and woke up in a gravity couch. At least it solves his housing problem?

Personality:

Vreille is... Difficult to get along with. He's crass, arrogant, vulgar, irritable, and more like than not to make fun of you.

Most of this comes out of his superiority complex, which could probably choke a large barnyard animal. If Vreille has met someone, chances are high that he's thought that he was better than they were. In fact, the fastest way to set him off is to state otherwise, explicitly or implicitly. Or even imagined. He's insufferably quick to jump to his own defense, even if it means jumping down someone else's throat. He always feels like he has something to prove, in every encounter and every conversation. And he isn't the best at noticing whether or not other people share this view.

He's also not the brightest bulb: he's not awful at thinking on his feet, but it's probably been years since he last cracked open a book that wasn't TV Guide. He has something that could almost pass as street smarts: he knows how to duck out of a fight (unless he's already drunk), can instinctively find a holder at a party, knows which alleys not to use as shortcuts. But most of this is Sundberg-specific, soaked up from years in the city, and doesn't hold much use outside it. As far as actual skills or knowledge sets, he's a little lacking.

Plus, he's stubborn to the point of detriment. Not that he's self aware enough to recognise it, but Vreille is obstinate enough to do things that he knows will end terribly just for the sake of proving himself right (or somebody else wrong)

So, he doesn't have very many friends. Fawn Montgomery, Halse Armenhagan, and the occasional company of Marc make up most of his social interactions, though he's on first name basis with most of the larger first names in the Sundberg party scene.

All in all, he kind of has the air of a small child trapped in a grown man's body. He's just barely responsible enough to pay bills and keep his head above water, but his payments are frequently late and sometimes he gets up to his ears in trouble. Which is kind of inevitable, when the only person you pay your debts to on time is your pot dealer.

Largely due to his immaturity, Vreille tends to get along better with a slightly younger crowd. Most of his closer friends are a few years younger than him, newer to the both the scene and the real world. This has the added bonus of letting him feel superior when he gets to explain things or hold his experiences over their heads.

So, to summarise: Vreille's kind of an ass. He's smug, self-serving, immature, condescending, smarmy, vulgar, and has the libido of a teenager. The few people willing to put up with all of this shouldn't be looking for anything to reassure them that it's worth it, because he probably won't be doing anything to prove them right on that.

Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:

Vreille doesn't have any special powers or abilities to speak of. The closest thing would probably be his innately fantastic skill at pissing people off, which... probably counts as a weakness.

Oh, and he dances like a total white boy.

Inventory:

His wallet, the contents of which are: eleven dollars, his bank card, and a crumpled grocery bill. He also has his housekeys on a chain. The bottom third of a pack of cheapass cigarettes and the very tail end of a bar matchbook. And... some lint, I guess.

Appearance:

Leggy, scruffy, frequently stubbled and permanently slouched. Vreille doesn't really cut an impressive figure, especially since he lives on a nearly exclusive diet of weed and Red Bull, and he looks it. He always has a habit of dressing in the morning out of his laundry bask... okay no he dresses off of piles on the floor. Or borrows his roommates clothes. He might clean up well if he tried, but good luck trying to motivate him. His PB is Adrian Grenier after 2005, which works fairly well if you just pretend that there's an extra layer of stubble on everything.

Age:

23.

SAMPLES
Log Sample:

Vreille pulls the uniform over his shoulders and grunts, wriggling into the fabric. He knows black is supposed to be slimming, but there's not much he wouldn't do for jeans and a tee shirt, by now. It clings to him in all the wrong ways, the belt hangs off his hips in a way that feels more clunky than sexy, and he has to keep repressing the urge to roll the sleeves down. Despite his guffawing, the ink on his arm is unsettling, in a way that he can't quite pinpoint.

Everything is unsettling in a way he can't quite pinpoint. Even the stars, he's discovered.

He knows the night sky, of course. Not well, not like the back of his hand (like Janice or Ian had, pointing up from the hood of their van and laughing when he couldn't recognise Orion). But he'd spent enough time staring up from the edge of the desert that he knew at least the basic shapes of the stars, could spot the Big Dipper and knew the light blue paling that tinged the edges of the horizon.

"Shit." He mumbles, narrowing his eyes out the window to glare. As though the universe can tell that he's frustrated with it, as though he can make a point to dying galaxies whose light he can see now. None of it fits, and he resents it, and he wishes that he didn't know that resenting it was useless.

He wonders, briefly, whether he's allowed to smoke in an airtight environment.

Clicking his lighter into life, he decides that -- all things considered -- he doesn't really care.

He just left paradise for a floating necropolis, and he doesn't really give a shit whether it knows that he's offended.

Comms Sample:

[A moment of white noise and aimless swearing passes, as he fiddles with the communications device, before Vreille realises that it's on and manages to actually speak into the microphone like a human being.] Right. Okay. So, listen, I have a problem over here. And I don't really know where to lodge a complaint, other than the obvious answer when anybody asks about where to lodge anything.

But, alright. So, I've been thinking about maybe getting a tattoo for a while. I mean, it seems about time! All this skin and no proper art on it? [Yeah, you can practically hear the airquotes on that one.]

Just a number, though? Just a number! God, I mean, it's boring! There's no design to it, no story to tell -- granted, "I woke up and have no recollection of how or why I got this" is always a good fallback, but christ! I wanted something better than three random digits for my first one, you know?

Anyway, I guess I can let this one just... Stay, since I don't really have a say in the matter. I'm going to have to get something way more impressive as soon as possible, though.