[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Nix
AGE: Too old for this shit
JOURNAL:
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doktornixIM: AIM: LostxBoi42
PLURK:
E-MAIL: doktornix @ gmail
RETURNING: I also play Ziggy ||
ziggy_stardust and Pam || sploosh[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Julian Priest || Provocateur
SERIES: The Hunger (TV series)
CHRONOLOGY: Season 2, after the end of Episode 1 “Sanctuary”
CLASS: Loner, slight sociopath, and likely to be cast as a villain
BACKGROUND:
Julian Frederick Attwater was born in the usual, boring, and ordinary way into a boring and ordinary world. He had a fairly normal childhood and adolescence in Brighton, in the South of England. His father was an old man, by many standards, even when Julian was born. He spent most of the boy’s young life in the process of growing weak, losing his faculties, and dying slowly. All of this left Julian’s mother in a rather crippling state of depression and led to significant alcoholism, denying her strange son much of her attention.
He worked hard, performed quite well in school, and earned a full scholarship into university. Socially, he was an outcast, not fully understanding his peers nor wanting to --at least on an individual level. He only cared for humanity’s motives as a species, as though he were an outside observer. No one seemed to give him much notice, aside from noting how odd he was or how cold and he, in turn, didn’t engage or trouble them much. He excelled at art and sciences and was set to earn degrees in both fine art and human biology, his mother and professors urging him to continue his education and go into medicine. Instead, in his senior year at university, Julian disappeared. He took the money he was given for housing and books and flew to New York with not a word of notice to anyone. He took only what fit in a suitcase and the money he could save over the course of four years. He left everything behind. Even his name. As soon as he reached American soil, he became ‘Julian Priest’ and the boy from Brighton was dead and behind him. As soon as he gained citizenship, he changed his name legally.
Julian spent years working on his art. He earned a few small showings, going mostly unnoticed. He struggled, sweat, starved and bled for his art, all to no avail. All the while, he watched other artists rise up and be praised. Watched those he saw as less talented earn the attention and audience he wanted and needed. One artist of Julian’s own age, Eddie Foden, was at least good enough to earn Julian’s respect. Julian liked his work and imaged he might even like the man. He wanted to meet him; to speak with him at least once. In 1973, however, at the peak of his fame, Eddie killed himself. Julian never got to meet him, or even to know what other brilliant work the man might have in his mind. Eddie’s death only made him more famous. It made him a legend. He went out at the top, and that meant he would never be able to fall. It was brilliant. Julian hated him for it.
At an Eddie Foden retrospective opening in 1983, Julian snuck in. He was still considered a nobody and far from deserving of an invite, but he wanted to see it. He wanted to be a part of it. There, at the opening, he was spotted by a talent agent named Brent Barry. A weasley little man with too much product in his short curls, a few too many free drinks in his system, and an eye for starving, lost, and uninformed young artists. He approached Julian and told him he could see that Julian was an aspiring artist. He asked if Julian had snuck in and promised not to tell anyone. Brent said he had been promoting Eddie Foden’s work for some time. He actually discovered the poor, tortured artist, in fact. It wasn’t until later that Julian would discover that these were largely lies. Brent was still as close as Julian could get to meeting Eddie. As Brent flirted and made promises, Jullian asked all manner of questions about Eddie Foden and told Brent about his own work as well. Brent promised Julian he could get him a showing, introduce him to all the right people, make him famous. He didn’t want much in return, as he knew an immigrant artist struggling in the big city couldn’t possibly afford his fees. Instead, he took Julian into a back alley where Julian --twenty-nine years old, and knowing he wasn’t going to get many more opportunities at a big break-- compliantly got down on his knees on the dirty pavement and gave Brent the payment he could afford; Brent’s manicured hands knotted in his hair.
That was how you became a star in New York. Not by talent alone, but by sacrifice.
Julian Priest spent longer at the top of the New York art world than most could ever hope for. He made a name for himself, even among people who could care less about ‘art’. You didn’t have to know anything about painting, or surrealist imagery, or obtuse political statements to be drawn to news stories about a man whose ‘art’ involved things like driving a car full speed into a solid collision test wall. His installations and performance art pieces were extreme, visceral, shocking and --most importantly-- difficult to ignore.
For many, he seemed to come out of nowhere in the early 1980s, appearing on the art scene with work that created such a deep, guttural unease that the viewer simply could not ignore or even immediately look away. Others came to know Julian in the early 90s, when he gained notoriety in print and television news as his work moved from purely visual to more involved performance pieces. When the gasps and wide, surprised eyes faded, the crowd was always left hungry for more. Desperate to know what he would do next. What further truth and raw, honest ugliness he would show them. Their desire fed his and he tried to push further and further. Tried to peel back the veil over humanity’s eyes more and more.
At the end of the 90s, it seemed he’d finally pushed further than his audience was willing to go. At least, that was his interpretation and the kinder angle taken by some critics, while others simply said he had ‘lost it’. Lost his mind or lost his art.
He was beginning to be seen more often as insane rather than brilliant. Especially after he purchased an abandoned prison outside New York City and became increasingly reclusive. Still, he wanted to show more and more of man’s flaws and fragility. He threatened his own life with his performances. He filmed and broadcast himself performing a lengthy self-surgery in which he calmly and professionally removed a 3” x 8” sheet of flesh from the back of his forearm, leaving himself terribly scarred. People were no longer engaged by his work. They were disgusted. They turned away. With the audience, so too went his agent and his funding. He had more to say, but no one to witness it and no means of getting his message out. Every proposal for a new showing he brought to his agent was turned down and the time between ideas was ever expanding as Julian grew older and more isolated.
In 1999, a widely publicised gala opening was held for “Provacateur: a Julian Priest Retrospective”. All of his best works of the previous ten years, as well as some earlier works. It was meant to be huge. It would remind the public of what had drawn them to him in the first place. It would reignite their hunger for his work and set him up for a magnificent comeback. At least, that was the hope. That was the promise that brought Julian out of hiding to attend, cleaned up and dressed in his finest.
Instead, the show was a terrible failure. The only press that attended stayed outside, uninterested in the artwork or presentation; simply waiting for a chance to photograph the mad hermit artist and his reactions to his dying fame. There were precious few attendees at all, in fact. A scant handful of the rich and the bored milling through works they barely cared enough about to glance at. A few protesters of his more religious works and of his perceived cruelty to animals lined up outside, one of whom tossed a molotov cocktail at the artist’s limo while screaming that Julian would burn in hell. Julian was crushed by the disappointment, but sure he could still reach them. He had new ideas. Bigger ones. He needed to open their eyes, still. Who cared if they were too weak to want to see more?
After the opening, he went back to his agent’s flat. His agent, who for years now had suckled from Julian’s talent and lived richly off of it. Who introduced himself as ‘the man who discovered Julian Priest’ when courting new artists or lovers. Brent Barry, who had nothing but praise for Julian’s every thought...when it was profitable. He went to Brent and brought him sketches, proposals, and passionately worded plans for his next collection and performance. He pitched his ideas to the man who could make them happen and bring the audience Julian needed.... and he was laughed at. Supporting Julian’s “madness” would be throwing away money, Brent told him. He told Julian no one cared now. No one wanted to see his sick freak show anymore. Julian was “over”.
Being told he was no longer relevant or wanted and that his creativity would no longer be supported felt like being handed a death sentence. Julian felt devastated, crippled, wounded to his core, and positively furious. Worst of all, he knew it was the response he would get. Oh, he had hoped otherwise, but he generally put little stock in hope. He came prepared to ‘compel’ a different answer from Brent. He drew a gun on his agent. Threatened him. Told Brent how worthless he’d always been and how sick he was of the spineless worm living off of him only to turn on him this way. Everything that night was a mad blur of what was plan and what was impulse. Julian wasn’t sure if he’d always intended to kill Brent Barry, or simply to threaten him into compliance. However, he knew Brent carried a small pistol for protection. He knew that. So he must have known Brent would draw on him in return. There wasn’t much choice in the end. The squirming, terrified agent managed to get a shot off before Julian pulled the trigger. The bullet sank deep into Julian’s shoulder and he returned fire with five shots into Brent’s chest.
He fled the scene and went back to his prison home. He was able to remove the bullet and bandage himself and called his assistant, Drew, to give her the following day off. He would like to have had her help with what was to come, but knew he couldn’t involve her. Julian knew he couldn’t get away with what he had done. He never really intended to. This was all one grand performance. An installation in multiple locations. His last and greatest creation.
After the bullet was taken care of, he had a meal and lay down to rest. He would need his strength. He woke to the arrival of police, searching for an unidentified murder suspect who had been seen taking a bus in his direction. He told them the man had come by seeking sanctuary, but he’d run him off. They thanked him for his assistance, but he knew he wouldn’t have too much time left. He went down to his medical facilities where he had performed his previous surgeries and set up the cameras for his performance.
Julian stripped down for the procedure, wearing only the modest dressings he had used on models in the past to create a medical version of Christ’s meager garments on the cross. He prepared his body --shaving upper legs and upper arms, washing the areas thoroughly, and applying iodine to the skin and tightening the proper tourniquets-- and covered his face, to prevent vanity or even identity being a part of the visual. Julian applied a timed spinal drip of lidocaine to himself and strapped himself to an operating table before his lower extremities lost all feeling and mobility. With the limited movement the upright operating table provided him, he was forced to use a manual bone saw, rather than an circular saw. He felt nothing as he removed each of his legs at the mid-thigh, though the blood loss tired him considerably. He was near exhausted by the time he began work on his left arm, just below the shoulder, though the area was not as completely numb and the pain helped keep him conscious. The surgery, in all, took hours. With his work done, he pushed the rubber tubing straps restricting his blood flow free and lay limp against the table, wondering if they would find him still conscious. Wondering who would have the honor. Things became blurry, distant, and cold before, finally, things went dark. He’d waited too long, perhaps. He was no longer on top. This sacrifice was made to be remembered. It was done to make him immortal.
His assistant found him when she arrived for work in the morning. The police were called and quickly tied him to the murder of Brent Barry. The pictures of his corpse circulated on the internet for years, reappearing now and again to shock new viewers.
Julian continued to influence the world, and through that influence, remained alive.
PERSONALITY:
Julian has always had a hard time relating to others. He’s the sort of closed off outsider that people usually associate with the darker creative types. He fits a stereotype, so few question it. In all likelihood, he suffers from a degree of functional autism, such as aspergers, or actual sociopathy. He’s never been tested psychologically and doesn’t care to be analyzed. He prefers to be the one doing the analysis. His whole life has been a careful study of humanity -- what they do, why they do it, what’s wrong or flawed with those answers. He became acquainted with the damages and decomposition of age and the inevitability of death at a very early age and has been obsessed with such things ever since. Humans, and by extension all that humanity creates, are inherently flawed and fragile. Temporary. He sees death in everything and waiting everywhere, and he resents its very nature. It is this impermanence in people, in relationships, and even in emotions that leaves him often unable to justify interactions or attachments with others. While he feels a normal and instinctual draw to have contact with his fellow man, he knows whatever joy, warmth, or meaning is derived will be fleeting and thus pointless. He lets his art serve as his connection to the world outside of himself, and in many ways it is his only functional means of socializing and expressing himself openly.
When he does speak to others or interact, often by necessity rather than choice, he tends to be rather cold and blunt. He says what needs saying as directly as possible and is done with it. He’s considered to be frank, callous, and even caustic. The exception is when he is invited or otherwise moved to discuss his art or the beliefs and motives that drive that art. There he becomes outright poetic, speaking at length on the nature of human suffering and the illusions he feels people construct to protect themselves from living in fear of death and the end of all they care for. He prefers to speak to cameras or groups rather than individuals, often made uncomfortable by more intimate interactions. He will spend long periods in total silence, or even ignoring those trying to speak with him, often turning them away with this behavior. The greatest argument against Julian being a sociopath, is that sociopaths are often described as charming.
As a strict personal rule, Julian does not drink alcohol nor does he smoke and uses only drugs that are ‘necessary’ for a performance or showing. If he injures himself or suffers pain or illness outside of a planned art piece, he will often go without any pain killers or medicines, unless it is necessary to survive or prescribed by a doctor. He keeps his body in the absolute best condition he is able, fit and free of poisons. He will suffer great amounts of pain and damage, but only when and how he chooses. He is among his favorite media for artistic expression and protects that finite resource and delicate canvas as well as he can when not carving it up.
After his death, Julian has continued to haunt his prison and its grounds. He held no belief in a heaven or afterlife and no formal religious views in life. He feels there may have been a god, once, when mankind required it. In our hubris, however, humans killed that god with our will to be greater and to be purely autonomous. We became the creators and shapers of our own world, and so Julian sees humanity as their own, tiny, flawed gods.
As a wraith, he is driven to continue to expose the ‘truths’ he sees in the world and to continue in acts of self-destructive artistic expression. It is both an inescapable creative urge and a sort of self-imposed hell, punishing himself for living his life as a slave to his desires to express himself and to be heard. He feels all people --or at least the vast majority-- live in the same sort of slavery. His kept him from having the same relationships and experiences as most others, and he resents that, but remains the same person, despite the hindsight and clarity death provides.
While arriving in the city more ‘alive’ than he has been will be an unexpected and intrigueing chance at a new start, he will likely fall into the same patterns again. He is obsessive and possessed by his artistic drive. It makes him a hard man to change.
POWER:
Resurrection - While all of the imPorts of the city seem to return from death, Julian can do so more readily, in most cases. This is both a power and a curse. It is his primary method of carrying on his ‘art’, by destroying himself in different ways to demonstrate or punctuate different messages. He will be at least slightly scarred by all instances of death and his quick return is dependent on said death being at his own hand or, at the least, by his own design. When the injury is not a fatal one, but is likewise by him and with similar artistic intent, it will heal almost immediately and leave less scarring, if any. The speed at which he revives/heals and the degree of remaining injury or scarring is dependant on the size of the audience for the ‘performance’. The audience may also be intended only to see the ‘end result’, in which case he will not revive until his work has been seen or reported on.
His ability to register pain is in no way different than normal.
Between Worlds / Julian’s World - Julian’s home and art studio --his prison-- exists as a pocket dimension between the living world and the afterlife. A personal purgatory. It remains exactly as it was at the time of his death, including that it is always the middle of winter with snow on the ground during the daylight hours and more falling at night. Beyond the gates and fences, there is nothing. Only the small prison and its yards. He can access his prison from wherever he currently calls ‘home’ (his MAC apartment, for instance) and always exits there, as well. He can take others with him into this dimension (though it takes some effort at first, getting easier the more times they’ve been) and outsiders can not access it without his assistance, unless they are able to enter the astral plane normally, astrally project, are also spirits or ghosts, or are able to project their consciousness outside of the physical realm by some other means.
He can, in times of very extreme danger, escape to his prison from wherever he may be, but without using his “home” door, this causes extreme exhaustion and temporary memory loss of the last few hours preceding his escape.
(If he moves out of the MAC, intentionally and as a purposeful change of residence, the entrance/exit to his astral home will move to whatever location he fully recognizes as his physical home. This would also happen with being imprisoned somewhere like NOHOPE, but not immediately. Only after and if he ‘accepts’ that he’s stuck there / going to be there long enough for it to count as a ‘home’)
Narrator - By his own bitter and pessimistic nature, Julian tends to see the worst possible outcome of any and everything. To this end, he will sometimes feel the need to ‘share’ these concerns and unfortunate “likely” possibilities he sees for others’ plans or actions. While he is not precognitive in any way, his insightful predictions will have a tendency to fester in the mind of those hearing them. They will begin to believe, as he does, that this is the only possible end of their current path and will, however unconsciously, begin to fulfill that prophecy and bring it about. (This will be at players’ discretion to opt into. Many may be strong willed or positive enough to shake off the effects, especially once they’re outside of his presence)
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The communicator is far too close to whomever is speaking. It’s all lips and teeth, a chin lazily cradled in a calloused hand, and an excellent view of greying stubble. What can be seen beyond the all-too-close figure is drab, dimly lit, and all bars and concrete.]
How can a stranger be called a hero? … It’s far too subjective a word to apply to someone from a separate world --a separate reality-- when who the hero of a story is very often gets determined by something as arbitrary as ‘who wins’. I’ve been called a great many things in my life. Many of them unpleasant. None of them ‘hero’, until today.
Suppose I should feel flattered... I don’t, though.
[He sighs and leans back a bit, rising up from leaning on his desk in front of the communicator. The shadows in the room lit only by the screen still keep him very much obscured, though it’s clear there are deep lines in his face. Dirty, light brown hair hangs in his eyes.]
We were all brought here --seemingly at random-- by a machine working on some programmed concept of what makes a hero. Some algorithm that seeks out saviors. What are the criteria, I wonder? Strength? Bravery? Morality is subjective, that’s out... Dedication? Lawfulness? Can’t be that... There are laws against almost everything considered traditionally ‘heroic’, aren’t there?
Maybe she’s just looking for balance. For each influence she brings in, a counter weight. A machine, I wager, would realize there are no such things as ‘good’ and ‘evil’, after all. And everyone’s the hero of their personal story....however tragic or vulgar.
Now...there’s me. I’ve been a soldier for truth. A lone crusader. A slayer of evil men. A martyr to my cause, in the end. A very heroic tale, if you look at it that way. Simply. In the black and white terms necessary for heroes to exist. So here I am.
Julian Priest. Artist. Newly anointed ‘hero’. At your service, I suppose...
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
The city was a new chance at things and an opportunity for a fresh start. It was also, however, a new and easy to reach audience. Both facts were alluring --enticing-- in their own ways, but Julian had rarely had such a ready and ‘captive’ audience. In some ways, this world was more informed and aware than his own, but it was also far more deluded and blind. There was a strong belief in heroes and villains. There were too many that believed ‘good’ would win out simply because it should, or that those who had great power and were well meaning would inherently, somehow, be ‘right’ in their choices and actions. It was idiotic. It was blind optimism and over simplification at their worst.
Julian walked out across the rooftop, feeling the rushes of warm air from vents that pierced the service and freed moist heat from a laundry room somewhere below. His well worn military surplus boots crunched across gravel and tar, sending small stones skittering as he moved to the tall building’s edge to look down on the noisy streets below. A crumbling brick ledge over a filthy and poorly lit alley in one of the more poverty stricken and crime prone parts of the city. The sort of place where ‘heroes’ loom from on high and guard the helpless, he figured. He’d even seen them, catching themselves on communicator camera and giving everyone a look at their noble deeds and dedicated guardianship. That’s what a hero was, by this childish definition, it seemed. A lone and isolated soldier --a vigilante in search of justice-- keeping watch over myriad crimes, wrongs, and failed lives...and feeling sure his insular and individual actions can change all of it somehow. One life saved surely won’t mean ten more taken or ruined.
Julian plays the role he was dealt. Plays it as ludicrously as he’s seen others perform the same tasks. He waits, crouched in darkness, wearing the black boots and leather pants of the ‘dark avenger’ so many choose to play, a black duster coat hanging down his back. The cuts to his chest still sting and he can feel the warm blood trickling down, following the slant and topography of his chest and stomach, dripping off onto the dirty rooftop and adding color to the black and grey of it all. Blood, too, runs down his forehead, with only his eyebrows keeping it from stinging and blinding his watchful gaze. The crown of thorns, he knows, is a bit much. A touch overdone. Nearing to being entirely played out. Trouble with religious iconography is how damned effective it is. Cliche or not, it always gets that extra touch of attention and nothing better symbolizes a martyr....particularly one whose life and death are to be held as justification for all the wrong actions and beliefs. A hero to save everyone...and no one.
Julian waits, listening and watching, until he finally hears a woman’s scream. Thank god. This was his second night at this and he was near to giving up on the whole thing. A woman’s shrieking cries came closer and he watched --still and silent-- as a man pushed her into the alley and against the wall. She seemed terrified and he appeared to have a gun. This could still be a consensual transaction between a prostitute and her john, Julian considered, and could simply be catering to less common tastes. Prostitution was a crime as well, though, so no harm if he was misreading it. That was, after all, the rationale of the hero: good and evil are as I interpret them.
The artist positioned his camera on the building’s ledge, aimed down at the scene below. He set it recording in night vision, the communicator set up to pick up video from the camera, in turn. He stood up, toes over the edge of the building, and hands in his coat pockets.
“Excuse me.” He called down, startling both parties and causing the man to turn to face him, gun aimed up in Julian’s direction. “Miss, you might want to fuck off now.”
The would be assailant pulled the hammer back on his gun, steadying his aim for the awkward angle. “Fucking imPorts,” he spat, “this is none of yer goddamn business.”
The trigger wasn’t even half back --just a bit of pressure leveled on it-- as Julian smiled and leaned forward, letting gravity carry him down, that increasing rush of wind as he fell ever faster. He was a floor down, maybe a bit more, as the bullet caught in his upper chest. Terrible feeling, being shot. Not as bad as what was to come, though. The man below had time for a good, final, “holy shit” and a solid attempt at firing again before the impact. Julian wasn’t a terribly heavy man, but height had a way of making up for that. The cushion of the criminal below wasn’t enough to save his life, but did prevent him spreading out in an ugly mess across the pavement. Good. Very good. The carefully carved “Futility” scrawled across Julian’s chest would still be legible when he was found. He hoped he would wake in the ambulance and not mid autopsy, but it was a difficult thing to plan. At least this was likely to be seen and be mentioned, and the network would see it. He wondered if the Porter would. This would be the first and final performance of Julian Priest : Hero.
...What to do next?
FINAL NOTES:
Julian is, in many ways, a walking trigger warning by his own nature, and I will be putting up opt-out posts to that effect and putting most of his posts under cuts. He will likely tend to be very wordy and preachy on the network, but very brief in replies and conversations in person.
Julian spends the entire second season of the Hunger as the narrator, haunting his prison and killing or wounding himself again and again in fashions suiting the theme of the episode, in case you were wondering over those decisions.
