campioned

Name: Marie
Contact: seemarierun AT plurk
Other Characters: None
Character Name: "Alec" Campion (technically David Alexander Tielman Campion)
Age: 19
Species: Human
Canon: The writings of Ellen Kushner, specifically her novel Swordspoint (and the short stories that she has since written that come before Swordspoint chronologically)
Canon Point: The end of the novel. He's walked into the flat and announced that he brought fish.
Character Info: A book review that goes into some detail - There's not a lot on the book online. I'm half tempted to link the Amazon page for it, because some of the customer reviews have some detail, so I'll just give you a quick summary of the setting and the plot. If you need more, let me know.

Basically, the world of Swordspoint is a large, nameless city seems to line up with the London of Shakespeare's time. It's dirty, it's harsh, and the nobility squash the poor underfoot. The city has two courts: the regular court, for normal people, and the Court of Honor. The latter basically allows nobles to hire swordsmen to challenge/kill other nobles who have "affronted" them and to hire swordsmen to guard them against such challenges without legal punishment.

For an egalitarian like Alec, the city and its classes and excess and poverty are hell. He was born into a landed, country family with ties to one of the highest city nobles, his grandmother the Duchess Tremontaine, and he doesn't want anyone to know about it ever. When his sister is married off against her will, Alec runs away and gets his rich grandmother to send him to university. When his refusal to swallow his pride and play university politics ruin that, he winds up wandering Riverside, the roughest part of the city, trying to provoke someone into killing him.

Three days into the attempt, Alec meets the other main character, Richard St. Vier, who is one of the strangest, most violent-tempered men in the city... and who somehow doesn't murder Alec. They become friends, Richard takes him in, and the two of them become embroiled in one of the biggest political intrigues to hit the city. This is both due to Richard's job as a swordsman for hire (see above: nobles hiring him to settle their bullshit) and Alec's relationship with the Duchess.

Along the way, Alec is kidnapped as a means to blackmail Richard into performing a job he doesn't want to do. Afterwards, Alec is released and relapses on drugs, destroying the well-chosen gift Richard got him while high as a kite, because he realized that he's a liability now that people know that threatening him will get Richard to kill for them for free, no matter what. Except, Richard sends a message to the nobles by brutally murdering the Lord behind the kidnapping, which gets him brought up on charges before the Court of Honor because no noble comes forward to say that they hired Richard to do it for a "reason".

So, despite being the one who needed protection for most of the book, Alec saves Richard for a change. He goes to his grandmother (the Duchess) and convinces her he's going to be a good little heir now. She sends him to act in her steed at the court, and Alec, who is extremely smart and at least passably skilled at politics, manages to insure that Richard's pretty head will stay on his neck. Thus, everyone finds out that Alec's a noble much to his dismay and both Alec and Richard go back to slumming it in Riverside like nothing ever happened. Really, that's it. 75% of the book is the characters all talking around in circles at each other, which is interesting to read but dull to recap.

Personality: Alec isn't a nice person. He believes in equality, yes, and holds truth and knowledge in extremely high regard, but he's a selfish, spoiled brat. He's such a self-centered person that he continually buys the one food that his lover hates for breakfast. All the time. He has a nasty, acidic tongue that he uses seemingly daily to insult people and pick fights.

It's worse than simply arguing, as this is the quasi-1600s and everyone likes a good duel - only Alec is in a relationship with the best swordsman in the city, so not only does his cowardly butt not have to fight the fights, he knows that Richard's going to kill whoever insulted him. Most of the people that he picks fights with seem to be assholes - pimps, cheats - but he's also doing it because seeing them die excites him. He's definitely a little messed up in the head, and he does occasionally hurt himself. There are references to him possibly being abused as a child - locked in a cupboard as punishment, etc - but these aren't revealed until the sequel.

His self-destruction goes further than that. Alec has an addictive personality and, despite being barely 19, he drinks to the point of drunkenness almost daily, gambles whenever Richard gives him money, and has dabbled in drugs in the past. It's largely self-medicating. He hates not being in control and yet has almost no means to control things. He can see and understand myriad simple ways to make the world run better, and it makes him bitter that the only one he's allowed to use is to have Richard kill people.

So what isn't shitty about him? Alec is absolutely brilliant for his time - he talks about getting in trouble at university for mathematically proving that the stars were in motion (the findings were contrary to that of ruling professors). He's very collected, nearly always seeming far too cool and calm for a teenager. He's described as having a lovely, drawling voice that people enjoy listening to when he's in a better mood (ie, not hurling insults at them). Alec has a clever, wicked sense of humor (used mainly for hurling insults). If you aren't stupid or needlessly cruel (he is PURPOSEFULLY cruel), he isn't hard to get along with. He simply wants to dice and drink and have superficial fun in his little piece of Bohemian life where freedom is everything and money is just food and warmth. He doesn't want to get to know anyone, and they're not allowed to get to know him or ask personal questions.

His behavior towards Richard is slightly more mellow - Richard is perhaps the only person in the novel that Alec respects (and even loves). Richard is also the only person who Alec knows in the novel who is strong, honest, honorable, and dependable - even if he kills people for a living. What I'm saying is, Alec is capable of being decent, if overbearing, to more than one person so long as they're better at being decent than he is.

Genre Preferences: Indie, Punk, Rock
Choice Instrument: Lead, Piano, Drums, Guitar (But not lead and drums, that's weird)
Rockstar Persona: Alec has been brainwashed to be the quintessential out-of-control rock star, the sort that burn too hot and fast and bright and snuff themselves out at the height of their fame, before mediocre albums and age begin chipping away at their legend. Honestly, given his existing personality, it wasn't too much of a stretch. He enjoys drinking (daily), picking fights (for his bodyguards to finish), dabbling in drugs (he thinks it lets him see the deeper truths of the universe), and generally being a dick.

He likes attention. He doesn't share well. He tells himself that he's only deigning to be in this band because he can't play every instrument onstage by himself (and he would if he could); in reality, it's never actually occurred to him to even try to leave.

If asked about anything other than the present during an interview, Alec yells at people, snarks at people, or storms off in a huff. He's like Woody Harrelson, he doesn't like talking about anything but his current project. Still, it's generally known that he ran away from home to embrace his love of music, and that he was previously in a super experimental band that no one's ever heard of because it immediately collapsed under the weight of its own hubris because the universe wasn't ready for their bullshit. Funnily enough, no one ever seems to know what it was called or have heard any of their stuff.

Alec is programmed to give the impression that he is somehow part of this glorious (carefully crafted by corporate to relieve everyone of even more money) counterculture. He considers himself to be on the cutting edge of what is cool, what is right... just don't stop to wonder why this stalwart self-proclaimed lover of freedom isn't self-publishing so that no one else can contribute or censor his art.

Ideal CR: A mutual nightmare of playful antagonism, artistic fever, drug-addled antics, and borderline malice.

Writing Sample: Test Drive Meme thread