Weekend Warrior for AV-OCT

CHARACTER PROFILE

WARNING: This profile will seem contradictory, muddled, and generally confusing until the Background Information section.


Name: Donovan Steward; "Don"

Nickname: The Weekend Warrior

Age: 31

Gender: Male

Preferred Pronoun: He

Species: Human


---Physical Appearance---
Height: 5'7"

Weight: 150-165 lbs.

Build: Fit and strong, but not heavily muscular

Skin: A mellow tan gained through daily sun exposure from his window cubicle; beneath his clothes his skin is pale, and the tan line is readily apparent

Hair: Reddish brown, the color of cedar bark; cut to an even half-inch length, slightly thinning in front

Eyes: Honey brown; slightly myopic, but not to the extent that he would need a glasses restriction on his driver's license; wears slim, squarish wire-frames for style on occasion, but the prescription is weak and he can do well without them

Other defining features/anatomy:
> Numerous traces of scars, representing far more stories than scope allows
> A prosthetic left ring finger, obtained as a result of a "wedding incident" of which he declines to speak, shrugging off the event as a "boring story"
> A "Shoop-da-Whoop" tattoo on his butt, of which he is entirely unaware; the iconic googly face is pointed forward, and the two halves of the face straddle the crack; there is no "lazar" but its mouth is strategically placed to imply a different sort of missile attack; a textual caption above the face yells, "BLAGH!" in bright blue letters

Gait/Posture: Commonly he has the casual bearing of a worldly man, though often quiet, reserved, and slightly slumped -- extraordinary situations, however, bring out the animated extravert in him

Voice/Speech Patterns: In everyday circumstances he has an even, amiable tone and is fairly confident and charismatic, though he often sounds bored (especially at work); when things get exciting he is much more lively and has a quick wit, often telling jokes in seemingly inappropriate situations, and casually relating short tales from his many adventures

Clothing and Accessories: During the week, it is nothing but business casual during the day and loose-fitting sweats at night; this would not ordinarily change during the weekends, except that it often does, and in many unpredictable ways


---Personality---
Likes/Dislikes: Don has no strong feelings toward his job. He doesn't love it, nor does he hate it, which leaves him bored. This sense of quiet desperation carries over into much of his free time, when he participates in various activities just for something to do. One thing that he is passionate about, however, is his weekly Friday evening ritual of going to a random joint and drinking until life gets fun.

He finds his mundane workaday existence to be unbearably dull and he dreads going to the SPAM building each morning. However, he craves the stability that such a lifestyle offers; during his manic weekends, he yearns to return to work on Monday.

Aside from this, one would be hard pressed to find a man with fewer preferences. After his many varied experiences, he is open to just about anything.

Fears: Don's life has stripped him of virtually all fears except for two: First, that upon his retirement, the lack of daily obligations would drive him to alcoholism. Second, that his boss Mr. Stokemeyer will make his and his coworkers' lives miserable on the coming workday.

Strengths: Among the many diverse skills and knowledge sets Don has acquired, the most useful is his natural, well-developed knack for improvisation. Supplementary traits include charisma, adaptability, martial arts, and a vast bank of seemingly trivial knowledge gleaned from books and entertainment media.

Weaknesses: Don is, in all notable respects, an ordinary mortal man. Aside from this obvious disadvantage: When things get interesting, he maintains his narrow focus from his ordinary daily life no matter how bizarre the circumstances, causing him to miss the big picture or fail to grasp the gravity and magnitude of a situation.

Hobbies:
Monday -- Long bath night and quiet contemplation
Tuesday -- Gym, TV
Wednesday -- Settle down with a book, newspaper or magazine
Thursday -- Gym, shopping and errands
Friday -- Cap off yet another week of life slipping by with a few drinks
Saturday/Sunday -- Unstructured recreation

Quirks:
> Fiddles with his prosthetic finger when bored or anxious
> Quotes and references TV, movies, books, and other popular media
> Frets over his thinning hair whenever something even tangentially reminds him of it
> Launches into compelling stories to illustrate points, but trails off before getting to the parts his audience wants to hear
> Believes that waking up facing the left side of the bed on a Saturday morning is bad luck


---Background Information---
Planet: Earth, present day

Occupation/Social Class: Telemarketer; upper middle-class urbanite

Relationship to Secondary Character: Gadge is helping him to survive the tournament in any way she can.

History: Some people might think of Don Steward as a superhero -- a mild-mannered telemarketer by weekday, transforming into a galavanting man of adventure with extraordinary gifts on the weekends. Others might think him the lucky victim of an astoundingly improbable lifelong coincidence. Both of these could be considered true.

Don grew up as the middle child of an average family in a typical middle-class neighborhood. He got decent but not outstanding marks in school, completed a Bachelor's in psychology, and became firmly wedged in a career at Smith-Peridan Advanced Marketing, a telemarketing firm. He led a remarkably uneventful, solitary and unfulfilling life for eight years, reading and studying dutifully on any topic that caught his passing interest, but otherwise letting life pass him by.

Until one fateful Friday afternoon when a new hire at SPAM, seeking to ingratiate himself with his supervisor, invited Don out for a drink that evening. This singular end-of-week outing immediately became a weekly observance that changed his life forever.

On that Friday night in question, Don karmically reversed his years of viceless living by becoming very, very drunk. Upon awakening Sunday afternoon ("Sunday? Bloody Sunday?") he achingly retrieved the newspaper -- and found, splashed across the front page, an article relating how a drunken Donovan Steward had single-handedly rescued sixteen people and seven animals from a burning apartment building down the block from the bar. He was hailed as a hero, but he remembered nothing. However, the dozens of blistering cat scratches and singed hairs on his arms -- as well as Mayor Kohl's key-to-the-city ceremony -- served as ample proof of his deeds.

This early Saturday morning adventure is notable only because it was Don's first. As far as interesting tales go, this first was among the least exciting.

Invariably, Don would go out for drinks on Friday night, either alone or with company. And invariably -- no matter how much or how little he consumed -- he would wake up in the middle of some outrageous circumstance, with no memory of what he'd gotten into or how. Mountain-climbing expeditions, visits to Taiwan, kidnappings, sunken treasure, mafioso hitmen, transvestites, aliens, fairies, radioactive platypi, sinister talking lawn ornaments, and time travel became a regular fixture in his weekend exploits.

Always he would need to find his way out of some inexplicable, sometimes desperate situation, using the skills, knowledge, and genre-savvy insight gained through his eclectic armchair studies. And sometimes it was a race against the clock: if he came in to work just three minutes late on Monday morning, Mr. Stokemeyer's harassment would sour his entire week.

Basically, his life is currently a mid-life crisis of legendary scope.


---Combat---
Fighting Style: An unregimented, highly improvised combination of tae kwon do, aikido, boxing, vale tudo, judo, and traditional weapons such as fencing and staff fighting (all learned from twice-a-week programs at the local gym); also, a reasonable degree of experience with firearms

Weapons and Gear: Upon entering the Star Games, nothing but a Swiss Army knife, cell phone (out of range), wristwatch with date and compass, wallet, coins, key ring, belt, tie, two pens, pocket comb, rubber band, and a briefcase containing paperwork for sales he must close. There is no telling what could come later.

Unusual Abilities: Foremost is his ability talk and/or improvise his way out of the situations he finds himself in, as well as sheer dumb luck working noticeably in his favor. Also, he has an uncanny tendency to arrive at solutions to problems which don't upset the status quo of his mundane workaday lifestyle.


---Star Games Specific---
Reason for Joining the Competition: Don awoke in the middle of a fight in one of the trial competitions on a distant world, during which Nevermind selected him to participate in the Games.

Life Goals: Don has always floated through life, taking what comes without aims or ambitions. However, he has a strong desire to have a steady girlfriend rather than fleeting weekend flings.

Final Notes:
> He doesn't really want to participate in the deadly Games, and just wants to get back to Earth in time for work on Monday. But he must still play to his fullest to save his life, and he will.
> Any missed work time will result in mounting stress which will affect his temperament. However, such will not come into play until Round 3 (Audition = late Friday night; Round 1 = Saturday; Round 2 = Sunday)
> Ingenuity, not strength, is his most effective weapon. Think of Bruce Campbell's character in Army of Darkness. Or MacGyver.
> He must always remain blissfully unaware of his butt tattoo, and must never speak of the "Wedding Incident" in detail.