Adam Monroe

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever).
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession

List the top five ideas/concepts/etc you keep in mind while writing the character that you believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

1. He was completely willing to release a virus that would kill over 97% of the world's population. He may regret using Peter to do it, but...he doesn't really think he was wrong in wanting to do so. The world could use a nice little push of the reset button.

2. He loves Peter. He loved (loves) Angela, too. He may still do so. There's a distinct possibility that Nathan is his son (exhibit A: Claire--abilities run in the blood, people). This leaves him emotionally frazzled a lot of the time--and considering how much of his emotions he's shut down to survive...

3. He has a God-complex. It's not going away any time soon. He knows how to mask it to appear charming and totally normal and make you think that he's just an awesome leader you want to follow, but really? He thinks he's the fucking second coming of the messiah. There's a reason he picked twelve disciples, yo. And you'd damn well better believe he's taking significance from the idea of building his new world on a rock named Peter.

4. He really does want to save the world. He's not a bad guy. Okay, yes. He wants to kill almost everyone to do it and run things afterward, but...it's for their own good. He doesn't want to make them slaves or anything. Just...look at what people get up to on their own: war, disease, famine, killing each other over religion and borders and oil, arguments over equality and stripping people of fundamental human rights. His world would be so much nicer and shinier. Everyone would have enough to eat. Everyone would be free to love who they wanted to love. There would be no war, no religion (except, sort of, adoring him). "Imagine" is pretty much his theme song, despite the "Hallelujah" obsession.

5. He thinks all of this is his divine right/mission/destiny. You can thank Hiro for that. He's the one who showed up and told him he was supposed to be a mythic hero, then betrayed him and disappeared back into the future without leaving him more guidance than that, leaving him to face eternity alone with all his messed up Puritanical religious beliefs. Y'know--the ones where God didn't let Adam and Eve stay in the Garden solely so they wouldn't eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal, because then they'd be like Him. Boy took that shit seriously, upbringing like his. Mix that with Hiro's hero/save-the-world-spiel and it was a recipe for disaster.

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

1. Comment with your character's journal.
2. List a verse or verses if you would like to pick one
3. I'll write a few words on Adam's feelings for them.
4. Feel free to return/spread the notion!
5. Enjoy!

I'm a pretty damn good pianist. Most people seem shocked when they find that out. I like playing down at the local bar, wouldn't mind a more regular gig. I sing well, too, and am actually really fond of music. I don't know why people end up being surprised by it--you live as long as I have, and you have time to get good at things, time to practice until you're more than proficient, even if you hadn't a great deal of natural talent.

Of course, music was mostly forbidden when I was growing up, which is probably why it always fascinated me. If it was supposedly of the devil, I was pretty determined to be a part of it. I'm contrary that way--that shouldn't surprise anyone, actually. But then I found that I loved music for itself. It has an inherent order to it, it grows on itself, it changes through the years, but a real understanding of music theory, of the past, allows you to create the new things of beauty that will last. I enjoy watching the trends change, and I love watching the instruments change, and yet the passion that drives musicians has been the same through the years.

Some things can only be expressed through song, through the poetry of mathematical progression of notes. It's an escape and an expression of the truest things about you. I can lose myself in a piece, and when I play...it connects me to the men I've been before, and the man I could be at the same time, past, present and future all united. It's some of the only time I truly feel like myself--no masks, no expectations, just me and the music.

Maybe that's why I'm good at it, and why it surprises so many. No one expects to see that side of me. Most don't think it exists, and if it does, why would I show any such vulnerability.

...Maybe that's why I don't tell most people when my gigs are.

1 question...
1 chance...
1 honest answer...

That's all you get. Ask me one question. Any one question, anything, no matter how crazy it is. An honest answer. No catch.

All comments will be screened so your question stays private between you and me, and only you will get to see my answer to your question. But I dare you to repost this and see what people ask you.


[ooc: they'll actually be fake screened, so other muns can enjoy reading, but consider everything automatically locked between Adam and your muse]

I used to be fond of sake. Like really, really fond. The sort of fond that isn't really all that healthy, because you end up missing half your life in a haze and the other in a hangover and none of it is at all productive. But more than that--I loved the taste of it, the burn of it. Oh, don't get me wrong, I loved the black veil it drew over memory and blame just as much or more, I was fond of the stuff itself. After a youth of cheap ale and gin, sake was truly the godsend I thought I found in Japan.

I can't get drunk anymore. How funny--it was a set condition of becoming a hero, for me to stop drinking, but little did we know then that it was about to not matter anymore. My ability manifested fully. I woke from the dead. And, believe you me, promise or not, I worked desperately hard to get drunk that night, but to no avail. The sake burned out of my body the way it used to burn away regret, and left me face to face with the reality of what I was becoming.

Still, I drink for pleasure, now, for the taste and the loose-knit memory of a kinder oblivion than any I've found in ages, but it isn't sake. God, no. I won't touch the stuff unless forced to by politeness or custom, and only then if I'm in a mood to be conciliatory, not offensive. For the sake of a business deal I need or a connection I want to keep, I'll force the stuff down, but I don't enjoy it anymore.

It's laced with too many memories, too much lost hope, too many disappointments, too much failure. Every sip brings back something I'd rather forget, instead of driving an errant memory away, and when I cannot lose myself in any pleasant escape even, then I find it far more wise to avoid it when possible. If I'm going to drink, let it be a wine that brings to mind the halls of Versailles, or a beer that reminds me of afternoons with mates in a pub, or a solid whiskey sipped by a fire, imbued with memories of conversations and dreams that never quite died. But not sake, not anymore. That love, like so many others, is dead, and I'm fine with it staying a ghost of a past I won't repeat.