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Author Topic: Maverick Steele  (Read 1163 times)

Scott Cooper

    (01/12/2011 at 08:13)
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THE BASICS
Name: Maverick Eugene Slater-Steele, sometimes known as Mav
(Note: Maverick doesn’t consider ‘Slater’ as part of his name. It does say so on his birth certificate, however.)

Former Character's Name (if you had one): Scott Cooper


CHARACTER DETAILS
House request:
Slytherin. Maverick is, as you’ll see later, one of those guys who just belong in green and silver. Resourceful, cunning, and manipulative.

Year: 
5th, 6th

Bloodline:
Muggleborn


Magical Strength (pick one):
Charms

Magical Weakness (pick one):
Conjuring and Summoning

Biography:
“Annd hailing from the city of Greensburg, campaigning on the Democratic ticket to success in the Pennsylvania senator elections once more, I give you…Eugene Steele!”

Cue – applause. Multitudes of people in the streets, whooping and cheering, hats being thrown into the air. Cue – one man with a gun and a bullet in Eugene Steele’s head. Cue – panic.

Fourteen years old when that happened.

To be completely honest, I don’t remember a thing of what happened. I don’t know if that’s just me trying to deal with it by blocking the whole image out, or if it’s just me having the memory span of a goldfish. There’s this big gap between my thirteenth birthday and the beginning of the next year, and then – and then my dad’s dead, my mom’s this close to getting herself chucked off the tallest building she can find, and I’ve got a million cameras hunting the whole family down trying to figure out just which school I go to, because my name isn’t on any of the Muggle lists.

You want to know exactly what happened.

All right.

November 22, 1957. Pennsylvania celebrates the birth of Senator Eugene Steele’s firstborn, whom he decides to name Maverick on account of his sometimes controversial decisions. Those decisions, however, have kept him in the seat for ten years and counting, and it’s going to do so for the next fourteen. Mum forced her last name in front of dad’s, and that was the only act I’ve ever disagreed with her on, to be honest.

You could say I grew up in a privileged environment. Comes when your dad’s the way my dad was. Born rich, died rich. He sent me to god-dang etiquette class. Pennsylvania’s finest grade schools. Of course, that was before they found out about what I could do.

I found out when I was five. I found out I could set the fish tank in the class room on fire, when technically no fish tank should be able to be set on fire. The class went crazy. I liked that. I liked the chaos. I liked the screaming.

I started to set more and more things on fire until they hauled me up and dumped me in front of the principal. On account of dad being who he was the old fogey didn’t do much to me, just called my parents in and explained what I’d done. Some guy came down from this place after that. Salem, or something. Offered me a place at the most prestigious magical school when I turned eleven. Thing about my parents is, they just got to hear the word ‘prestigious’ and they’ll sign you in.

Simple as that.

So I went to Salem, and dad supported me just about every way he could. He liked to do that, liked to see his kid be the best at whatever. Didn’t matter if it was a normal sort or if it was magical, as long as I was tops. As long as I was tops, he didn’t care about me. He’d let me do whatever I want.

But studying is boring. Studying gets you nowhere. I liked to learn offensive spells, how to curse people, how to give them boils. That was the funnest bit about Salem.
Life was progressing nicely and slowly, just the way I enjoyed it. One morning during the summer I went down to the basketball court to play some ball. With friends? I don’t have friends. I played with guys four years older than me. I’m that sort.

He said, “Be back by nine.” He didn’t even look up from his election speech. Pretty much the last thing he ever said to me. Once in the forehead, nine twenty three in the morning. A couple hundred witnesses. The guy who did it is either behind bars or next to dad. All’s the same in death.

I was fourteen when he got shot. I know I’ve said it already. Got sick of seeing his face, mom’s face, my face in the papers. It was twenty four seven coverage, and it was terrible. Hounding my mom, crashing the funeral. She tells me about it because I don’t remember anything at all from that period, after he got shot. She says that there were these two guys from some tabloid thing who jumped the fence and ran around the cemetery trying to get photos. She says that there were others nosing around trying to find out where I disappeared for nigh on half a year. Broke into the house and stuff like that.

So she moved us to England, where hardly anyone cares about the senator of Pennsylvania who died almost a year ago. No one cares about this sort of stuff in England. All they care about is God saving the Queen and not missing their tea in the afternoon. It’s boring, but at least no one’s spitting in your face asking you questions you don’t know how to answer.

So here I am. Waiting to start a new life in Hogwarts. Do I care? Not particularly. I just wonder if British children scream the way American ones do.

Did I get bullied in school? You’re asking that so you can find out how I turned out this way. The answer is no. I didn’t get bullied school. I wasn’t the one who had people kicking him while he writhed on the sandy floor trying to cough out the mixture of blood and dust in his mouth.

I was the one who kicked. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Please include these sections if they are not addressed in your biography.

Personality:
Maverick is an anarchist. Pure and simple. Perhaps not in a way that causes real hurt to people, but in a way that causes absolute chaos. Because rules don’t belong in a world like this, so Maverick tears them down and lets people run wild. He feels sometimes as if he’s doing the world justice, bringing anarchy as it rightly should be. He’s got no problem watching chaos from the sidelines, but he’d rather be the one causing it sometimes.

He doesn’t like to show that side of him, though, because he knows (through his father, who taught him that diplomacy solves any problem) that humans don’t like this sort of thing. So he hides it behind a mask of falsehoods and niceties. Maverick isn’t exactly charming, but he’s got this calm, collected veneer to him, such that it looks like he’s mentally extremely stable and there’s nothing wrong with his head. A psychopath, then, who appears to be perfectly normal.

The man who killed his father was one of those future Oswald types, trained in the Marines, bent for some reason on killing Democratic politicians. Maverick still carries that man’s dog tags around. It hasn’t got his name on, but it’s got his serial number: 13271963 printed. It goes everywhere with Mav. If he loses it, there’s going to be some serious cold-blooded fist fighting going on. Some pickpocket in the airport where Mav and his mother were going to London from decided to take it from him. In the course of the two hour waiting time they had, Mav hunted down the man, took back his dog tags, meticulously taped the man to the wall and then pulled out his front two teeth.

To Maverick there is no good or evil. There is simply a need to fend for yourself. Therefore, moral problems and such do not bother him. He will stop at nothing to get his way, which may be seen as a trait of perseverance – until, of course, he hits someone. And there’s no pain that will bother him. Sure, he can feel it, but he’ll just go on without having shown any semblance of having felt it. Like a machine, a mechanical machine that rises up and just keeps hitting you.

He has a very gentle, very pleasant voice; every sentence, no matter its contents, is as if he is talking about the weather. Thanks to his upbringing as one of America’s elite, Maverick speaks perfect English in a rather high-class American accent. His good manners, upright posture and immaculate looks mean that people are lulled into thinking that he’s a nice guy. Yet he is cold, calculating and analytical, seeing the world not in terms of values and people but numbers and figures. His smile is twisted, a sort of sickly grin that can strike fear into even the bravest of men.
Because of who he is, Maverick lacks a sense of guilt, often boasting about what he’s done after he’s done it. No one has ever told him otherwise, other than the usual ‘you are a very bad boy’. He also enjoys lying, and will not hesitate to lie to get what he wants. He only trusts his friends, and therefore has no friends. Probably the scariest part about him is that he doesn’t give a damn. He’s completely indifferent, apathetic, and only works for himself and his interests.

That said, there’s something of a redeeming side to Maverick. His ability to bend the rules makes sure that he’ll never be caught out for outright breaking them, yet never suffer the consequences of following them too much. Because of his indifference he’s brave, willing to fight for something he believes is his to deserve. He isn’t afraid of dying, and he’s something of a veteran in the Fighting Department. Maverick doesn’t believe in sappy romance because it isn’t logical, but deep down inside he knows that there’s a little bit of him that’s all sunshine and true happiness. What’s questionable is who’s going to come along and unlock it.

Also, once you win his trust, he’ll stay loyal. Unwaveringly. Of course, that’s yet to happen. Maverick’s smarter than people give him credit for, too. It’s just that he doesn’t like to show it. Manipulative, resourceful, and with a raw magnetism that make others gravitate toward him only for him to push them away if he doesn’t like them. 

Appearance:
Dark brown, almost black hair, blue eyes. Relatively tall, lithe. Extremely polished. Attempts a little stubble to make himself look more grown up. 

SAMPLE ROLEPLAY
You come across one of these three posts on the site. Please reply to one only as your character would.
*** Remember, you can only roleplay your own character's actions, not James' or Astrid's.


Option II:

“Oh, come now!"

Astrid Bixby’s voice carried down the corridor, the tall blonde girl not far behind. Her interviewee – or victim, depending on perspective – turned a corner and she frowned. They were always soelusive when she needed them. Sure, they would talk as if there was no tomorrow during class, but once she actually needed them to say something, they were nowhere to be found. Gryffindors.

Flustered, Astrid stopped in the middle of the corridor and stared, her parchment hanging limply from her hand. She was a good reporter, really, and she always did her best to make sure that everything she wrote was accurate. She glanced down to the quill, eyeing it with disdain. It wasn’t her fault if her quill misquoted. How was she supposed to know? It made for interesting articles, at least, and if she had misquoted the Head Boy last term as saying he had a love for stuffed animals, then that gave him personality. Astrid sighed.

A pout formed on her lips as she turned away, discouraged. The corridor was mercifully empty, though the doors to The Spellbound – the school newspaper – were ominously closed. Corbridge was a mercifully sweet editor, but Astrid was terrified of disappointing her all the same. She hadto come back with quotes.
Her eyes, blue, trailed her surroundings before choosing a new path, and she turned down a new corridor. A figure was ahead, and her eyes lit up, an impossibly rosy smile blossoming across her lips.

“Hey!” Astrid called, her voice light and singsong. She trotted to catch the person, her shoes clicking on the stone floor. “Wait up! It’s for the paper!” Her legs aided her admittedly poor running, and Astrid gasped as she came closer. “What do you think about serving frog legs at lunch? Some say it’s a delicacy, but others think it’s plain gross.”

Sample Roleplay Response:
He disliked Hogwarts. That much could be ascertained from the very first moment he had set foot in the damned place. It was big, and it was cold. Not to mention that half the kids here seemed to have stuffed an assortment of balls in their mouths – resulting in their absolute inability to speak proper English. If he heard one more misuse (no, massacre) of the word ‘vase’ he would throw someone down the highest tower.

Maverick Steele placed his hands in his pockets carefully and walked down the corridor with the assured pace of someone who knew what he was doing. There was no point in grousing about this place. Complaints did not make your life better. Doing something did.

Perhaps the worst part of Hogwarts was Maverick’s complete inability to do anything. It had been weeks since he had heard a decent scream. Seen a decent bit of anarchy. Chaos. The things that he loved. Britain was simply too ordered. There was too much routine, and too much discipline. A single toe out of line and you would be thrown into detention. Maverick prided himself on never getting into trouble no matter how much trouble he had caused. Detention would simply not do.
His ears picked up the hint of footsteps behind him. They were accompanied by a voice, a female voice, shouting. At him? Maverick smiled. Someone was talking to…him. No one ever talked to him. No one who knew who he was ever talked to him.

“Wait up! It’s for the paper! What do you think about serving frog legs at lunch? Some say it’s a delicacy, but others think it’s plain gross.”

The paper? Maverick surveyed this budding reporter with a gleam in his eye, resisting himself from licking his lips in anticipation. A long, deep chuckle pulled itself out of his throat. Almost unwillingly. “Frog legs?” he was examining her face, so set in its determination. It was almost comical to watch.

He would ground that determination to dust.

“Obviously,” he began, choosing his words carefully. Now would not be the time to make a mistake. He wanted to see her cry. “there is very little of the world that you understand. So many other, more interesting, things to write about, and here you are doing a piece on frog legs. Evidently your editors don’t have enough faith in your abilities to assign you something that would not, if actually published, be ridiculed even in a place where ridiculousness seems to be the norm. Frog legs? I wouldn’t read about whole frogs. I suggest you take that little smile off your face, because not only are you dumb, your editors seem to have no qualms in announcing that fact to the world. You’ve absolutely nothing to smile about.”

He waited. He would wait for as long as need be. The shocked, even pained expression that would appear on her face would be worth all the time in the world.

Maverick Steele

    (01/12/2011 at 08:13)
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And...of course being the klutz I am, I will post the application under the wrong account.

(Y)

William Lancaster

    (01/12/2011 at 08:32)
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Dear Mr. Steele,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Term begins 1st January. Currently, students have gathered at the Summer Campus for the holiday. You may also wish to visit the Elsewhere board to purchase your school supplies. Both the Summer and Elsewhere boards may be accessed via the Floo Network. We look forward to seeing you at the Castle.

Regards,

Head of Hufflepuff House

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