Realistic or Modern IN THE DEAD WOODS † CHARACTERS

[Kirkodirk]

I N † T H E † D E A D † W O O D S ​

• Adult IMG
• Child IMG

• 
  
  
• 
  
  

B A S I C S​

Nameː Callum Dean Riggs

Nickname(s)ː Cal

Age: 25

Genderː Male

Heightː 6'1

Sexual Orientationː Bisexual

Appearanceː Cal is somewhat tall along with lean and lanky. His slicked back, jetblack hair and scruff somehow match his usual tired slightly sunken eyes. His usual attire is usually jeans with a t-shirt and a dark leather or canvas jacket. His tattoos and scars mark him as either military or prisoner (or both). Most can't tell without further inspection.

Face Claimː Ben Barnes

P E R S O N A L I T Y​

Cal might attempt to act aloof, but his concern for the average stranger gets him into trouble more often than not. If he sees injustice he can't help himself, he needs to step in. On the outside, it usually looks like a guy who likes starting fights. He doesn't always win, but he tends to be vengeful. Other than that, he's relatively uncaring. He doesn't know what he wants to do in life, all he's good at is fighting and part of him hates it while the other is afraid that he likes it.

Fearsː Needles, Being attacked in his sleep, That he'll never find a real home

Hopes: To get out of Deadwood, find a place to call home

Worst Nightmareː He'll be responsible for the death of an innocent person, Feeling Helpless, His father.

H I S T O R Y​

During Cal's youngest years, his parents just having moved from Left Hand, West Virginia, to live out their dream of living near the coast. His father was having trouble finding a job. The father was a retired army grunt didn't have much experience, so he took a job at the lumber mill after multiple janitorial work attempts. Cleaning shit didn't suit him well outside the service. The mother was a stay at home mom, and pretty happy with her lot in life away from her disapproving and rather old-fashioned family.

A little less than a decade later, the family was still considered outsiders to Deadwood. Cal was now in grade school, and the mother was working part-time as a nurse. Being fed up with his hands being raw and callused every night, the father managed to become deputized. The uniform suited him well, and he liked the way his family smiled when he came home without any dirt staining him head to toe.

Things took a turn for Cal when, after a decent hunting trip with his dad, he came home to find his mother lying on the ground unconscious. Six hours later, they would find out that she had stage 4 lung cancer, inoperable. She died 2 months later. The father was much more distant from then on. He stuck around for Cal's sake. He'd rather his son didn't fall into foster care or, worse still, back to his in-laws, as his own parents were already dead. It was better to stick it out for his son, if for nothing else.

Throughout his school life, Cal was always an outsider. The other boys liked to pick on him, and every once in a while, it meant walking home with a black eye. Eventually, the other kids started walking home with bloody noses. As words got twisted around, Cal soon enough became known as the bully, or at the very least, the one you're meant to shun if you didn't want to be laid out. It suited him well enough, as his size eventually caught up with the others. He did fine in academics, but never above average. He didn't care about sports. The only thing he was good at was fighting. It seemed like father, like son.

One night after an incredibly lousy baseball game during the summer, Cal caught a few guys giving a girl a hard time and managed to distract them by getting his ass beaten long enough to get away. Three on one weren't great odds, but Cal was never very good at math. The girl who introduced herself as Milly was kind enough to rope him into her small group of friends. Things were good for a while.

Cal came home on graduation day and left with a familiar feeling he'd had almost seven years ago. His father was slumped over the table with a gun in his head and a bullet hole. With nothing left for him in Deadwood, he joined the Army like his dad. Although, no matter how hard he resists that urge, something seems to always pull his mind back to the small town in the deadwood.



Relationshipsː

Father	Daniel James Riggs	Deceased
Mother	Sofia Lee Riggs	Deceased
Friend	Nicholas Cook	Deceased
Grandmother	Sylvia Underwood	Unknown
Grandfather	Johnathan Underwood	Unknown

Wish it was True

❝There's a lot of assholes out there.❞​

 

[BasiliskVeranda]

I N † T H E † D E A D † W O O D S ​

• Adult IMG
• Child IMG

• 
  
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  
  

B A S I C S​

Nameː Liam James Forester

Nickname(s)ː Lee (what he's usually called), Jimmy (a pet-name reserved for very-close people)

Age: 26

Genderː Male

Heightː 6'4"

Sexual Orientationː Homosexual (Closeted and dumb about it)

Appearanceː Lee doesn't have the most bulky build imaginable, but he is rather tall. Not willowy, not quite rugged, he's an in-betweener in everything besides his height. That of which came as curious endowment, considering he was a pipsqueak punk in his early days.

Lee does have a curious smile, which is worth noting, considering its somewhat of a birth defect. When he speaks, it's likely the corner of his mouth hitches, despite his knowledge. Smiles are always half-smiles, because that's how his face works. A source of discomfort (and teasing) as a youth, he's grown into it, and reinvented it in the trappings of charisma.

He has many tattoos (high school/bad decisions), but as he's aged, he tends to cover them up.

Face Claimː Milo Ventimigliaiasfidsgshk

P E R S O N A L I T Y​

Lee is comfortable with many things, because he knows nothing ever goes his way. As a youth, he rebelled against his shit luck (and bullying) by being an angsty, erratic, explosive little thing with far too much piss and vinegar in his veins.

As an adult, he takes things as they come, and tries to find rational, usual solutions when he can, even if they don't really ever pan out. He's pragmatic, realistic, and occasionally very reckless if he's having a particularly bad day (and needs to blow off some steam), but overall he's a fairly well-adjusted man. He has a tendency to dig a little too deep into those around him, being a bit too good at recognizing when someone's making a shitty judgement call.

He has made every single shitty judgement call; they're easy to spot.

More often than not, he's the one to tell you something isn't going to work, and provide his perspective to help you through, but then he's right back to drinking a beer because he knows it'll go tits up regardless. Comfortable in chaos, yet always searching for the right path. He's the one who won't say "I told you so", but that half-smile says it enough. When all else fails, he'll adapt or accept whatever comes, because sometimes, no matter how good or right you are, and no matter how hard you work, what you got is what it is.

Better to make the best of it, and find some new way to overcome, when you can. Blood from a stone is not a smart idea, indeed.

Another key personality trait is he's not very good with being criticized. Though he doesn't have an ego the size of a dump truck, nor is it particularly fragile, he's likely to get mad enough to turn to beer, cigarettes, and thick silence when he thinks he's being unfairly maligned. That's when the aloofness comes in.

Fearsː Lee doesn't have very many fears. He's suffered enough as a youth (and a bad-luck prone adult) be fairly level-headed where all things dark and scary are concerned, but there is one key way to throw him off his guard; small spaces. Claustrophobic to a fault, Lee will do anything and everything to avoid being in spaces he can't move around in. He'd tear apart walls and use anyone (sans Percy) and everything as a stepping stone or stop-gap to prevent being locked anywhere restricting. He also does not take very well to being bullied, as he had been often as a tween and teen for various reasons.

This could be considered a fear, or potentially a trigger for some greater anger he's bottled up.

Hopes: Lee wishes for nothing in the world other than a normal life, and someone to call his partner.

The brunet has a horrible history with normalcy, lending itself to the worst strokes of luck imaginable. A destructive upbringing, senseless teasing, always being late to classes via outside forces, failing things he knew he could succeed at, cheating partners, a lost cat, job firings through no fault of his own, wash, rinse, repeat. Lee craves normalcy.

It might seem an odd hope, but for a man who could possibly get struck by lightning twelve times over if the conditions were right (knock on wood, it hasn't happened at all), normal is good enough for him. The curious thing is that, because he would be so used to things being not-normal and not going his way, that perhaps he may not be very surprised when it all inevitably turns to shit.

Worst Nightmareː Being locked in a small space, or losing Percy. At this point, losing Percy, or perhaps her being needlessly cruel to him...while also locking him away in a small space...would be the worst thing he could imagine.

H I S T O R Y​

Youth:
Lee was a smart kid, and though latently brilliant, failed everything. He was always late; bullies snatched his backpack on the walk to school. He could never keep his grades up; the dog actually ate his book reports. He was teased for his off-kilter smile, and being a puny magnet for chaos.

It seemed, and seems to this day, that a black cloud follows the poor guy around, but as a tween, things were harder still. Every shot he took was fumbled. Every attempt to prove he was good at something was stymied. Every teacher hated him. He struggled in every class. He could've been set right at the goal, and still miss the kick by getting his soccer cleats stuck in the grass.

Because of his absolutely piss-poor luck, he decided from an early age, that he'd be the reckless friend. The knows-shit-beyond-his-years friend. The friend people thought was 'cool', but really, was a mess. He was the friend who knew an older guy, and could get weed. He was the friend that lit things on fire, simply because his entire world was on fire, anyways.

The danger friend; tween or not, he was the one you went to because you wanted to have fun. Whether that fun was responsible or not, it wasn't like his alcoholic parents cared. And so, Lee became the chaos that followed him. Chaos was normal; he could never rise above it.

Even the fated party, with the fated friends he always felt beyond in years, and the fated disappearance of one Melissa “Milly” Fox had seemed normal to him. Normal, because nothing that ever happened to him was normal. He'd been curiously calm (he's so mature, look at how well he's handling even more chaos). Of course she hadn't made it home; Deadwood was called Deadwood for a reason. Whatever/whoever had taken her wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was that it hadn't been him.

It's a wonder he managed to make it home that night, just like it's a wonder that he ever made it to high school in the first place.

Teen:
Lee had reveled in his role of being dangerous fun. The slacker who 'could apply himself', if only himself wasn't a lightning rod for trouble. Dangerous fun was the only thing he'd ever been truly good at.

The formative experience that lead him to want to flee Deadwood came on the night of Junior prom; he'd decided he'd had enough of being the firestarter, the weed smoker, and the general full-time fuck-up. But it took heartbreak to get there.

Enter attractive, albeit stupid jock, and caustic punk-adjacent teen nightmare Liam.

Their brief relationship was volatile, messy, beautiful, and awkward. Sadly for Liam, Derrick Sullivan (and his entourage and family) would have never been okay with the two being together, and so paranoia set in, that lead to a devastating case of hazing/bullying. All set for prom. All set to take each other, social mores be damned. All set in a curious blue suit, and obnoxious magenta loafers. All set to turn around all the bad luck Liam had had (and bad name as the danger teen), and start off on the right foot, finally.

But the lie came. The rumor, the spread of it, and Liam was the brunt of cruel fate yet again. He was, apparently, obsessed with Derrick. It was also, apparently one-sided. And so, as it was the early aughts, Derrick and the other meat-heads baited danger boy to a far-off corridor, and he was jammed into the bowels of Deadwood's shitty little school for no less than a day, until he was found by a janitor.

Life had told him, in no uncertain words, that he did not belong here.

That he would always be 'dangerous fun'. That no amount of living his actual truth would be accepted in Dead Wood. That, perhaps, somewhere, he was the cause of everything bad.

Deadwood had to be the reason. It wasn't like he had much he wanted to hold on to anyways (alcoholic, useless parents, friends that he felt would only ever see him as 'dangerous fun'), and so he dropped out of high school and made his way to the nearest big city.

Adult:
Though his luck had never truly turned around, he adjusted, with time.

He made a true friend at an old job they both hated, and normalcy seemed at least...somewhat in his grasp. Older, stronger, wiser, and very much able to deal with a great deal of shit, Liam stumbled from disaster to disaster, and somehow managed to make it out relatively unscathed.

Perhaps, then, his luck isn't actually all that bad.

Perhaps, truthfully, he's a survivor, whatever the circumstance.

Relationshipsː

Cat that keeps running away — Daisy; black as night, very loving, but also has no sense of self-preservation (cars are just big metal birds, y'all).
Estranged parents — Debbie Forester (became a super-Karen). Richard Forester (became a human turnip who is still glued to sports ball broadcasts).
Group of friends — Long-since left behind, disentangled, dispersed. He has fond memories as their facilitator for reckless fun (Lee, can you ask that guy about the weed? Lee, ya' wanna go do somethin' crazy, we're bored!), but they've soured a bit. As he's reflected more on what happened with Milly, he wonders on the rationality of it. Someone had to have known, someone had to have seen her, and because Lee knows intimately about bad luck and shit circumstances, he's thought long and hard about just what Milly's were.
Blake Anne Percival — The one person in his life who somehow is immune to Liam's bad-luck shitstorm. Bottle-blonde, chatty, catty, and always dressed to impress. She's his beard, so to speak, or perhaps his platonic life-partner. Whatever the case, Percy is his 'important person'.

Sadly, she's a woman, but perhaps in time they'll settle into some sort of sexless marriage where she drinks boxed wine and he becomes a cat-dad and adopts 900 cats. Percy, along with Daisy, are really the only constants in his life (even if the stupid cat runs away at every given opportunity.)

Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun

❝Man, I know this is going to sound crazy, but how about we don't fucking do the thing that will probably get us killed. Just a thought.❞​