(no subject)

[aluminumandash]

PLAYER INFO
Name: Carolyn
Contact: smugfrog@plurk
Are you over 18?: Yes indeed.

CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Rustin Spencer Cohle
Canon: True Detective (season one)
Canon Point: A few months after the showdown at Reggie Ledoux's compound.

Appearance: Matthew McConaughey IN A SHIRT

Distinguishing marks include a tattoo on his right arm (partially pictured) of a prehistoric bird...or something...and another on his left breast. He has a cluster of three gunshot scars on his lower left torso.

Age: 31?????? according to a draft of the script, but McConaughey was 44 at the time, so let's say 34.
Setting: True Detective is set, for all intents and purposes, in our world—albeit a version of our world where the shadows are slightly longer, the vistas more desolate. There are no superbeings, no magic, and, at Rust's canon point, no cellphones. Ultimately it's a world of ordinary people making extraordinarily bad decisions while trying (on and off) to solve a murder.

The events of season one span seventeen years, beginning with the discovery of a body in a Louisiana cane field in 1995.

History: http://true-detective.wikia.com/wiki/Rustin_Cohle (Although I'm not sure why “mow his lawn” is in scare quotes, since he literally mows the lawn.)
Personality:

Rust Cohle may be the world's biggest hypocrite. “I think that human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution,” he says, when pressed to formulate a personal philosophy. “We are creatures that should not exist by natural law...things that labor under the illusion of having a self.” He goes on to explain—dead-eyed, in the cadence of a recitation—that humankind would be best served by committing mass suicide.

This is the protective stance he's adopted—that life is meaningless, that human experience amounts to nothing more than a collection of urges and fleeting impressions. He doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in love, rejects any form of faith as a testament to man's all-consuming need to affirm his own significance. (No, he does not have a whole lot of friends.) The interior of Rust's house is stark white, all but undecorated, furnished with nothing more than a mattress lying flat on the floor, and that's the life he views himself as leading—stripped down, free of ostentation. The truth of the matter is, of course, more complicated: Rust is still struggling to come to terms with the death of his two-year-old daughter Sophia, the senselessness of losing her to an inattentive driver coming around a bend in the road.

Rust's nihilistic outlook is hollow at its core, a series of justifications he uses to avoid grappling with his own grief over Sophia's death. Her death was only meaningless, he's able to tell himself, because every death is meaningless. The feelings that threaten to overwhelm him—guilt, pain, anger—don't matter, because feelings are ultimately just signals from the brain, chemical reactions blown way out of proportion by biological puppets with delusions of grandeur. Rust is honest, often brutally so (“[You] probably had something to do with it,” he agrees when a hapless convict asks if he might've gotten his own wife killed by telling his psychotic cellmate about her) and uncompromising (it takes him about a second to get on board with his partner shooting a captive suspect in the head, since two children were found brutalized and imprisoned on the man's property) because any deviation from his black-and-white conception of reality, any admission of doubt, could jeopardize the precarious balance he's managed to find. Rust's worldview is rigid because it has to provide the framework for his life and, coming off of four years of undercover police work followed by a four-month stint in a psychiatric hospital, he desperately needs structure.

His job imposes another kind of structure—the daily routine, the grind of casework, a chain of command he has to at least acknowledge if not respect. Offered psychiatric pension in the aftermath of his time undercover, he instead pulled some strings to transfer from narcotics to homicide. “Worthwhile” is how he describes his work, the highest praise someone who regards existence itself as an exercise in futility can confer, and Rust's dedication to his job runs so deep it often plunges into obsession. When he and his partner Marty are tasked with investigating an unidentified woman found dead in a field, Rust seizes on some of the scene's striking details—the pose the body had been manipulated into, the antlers on its head—and theorizes that it's the work of a serial killer. (Has Rust ever dealt with a serial killer before? Well, no, but he's come prepared: he owns books upon books on the subject.) He's so certain he's right that he immediately begins searching old case files for women who died under similar circumstances, staying at work long after hours, tacking up pictures of the victim's body on his wall at home. Suspecting the murdered woman was a prostitute, he obtains the names of some working girls in the area and spends his nights questioning them. Rust is analytical, methodical, relentless—he doesn't mind repetitive, thankless work as long as it serves a purpose, and thanks to chronic insomnia, he has plenty of time at his disposal. On the other hand, he has no patience for office politics, makes no attempt to befriend his fellow detectives (most of whom regard him with suspicion since he's from out of state, an unknown quantity) or impress his superiors. He even has Marty type up his reports for him. Rust's drive doesn't stem from ambition—it's his sense of responsibility that impels him to pursue the case so singlemindedly.

Because if Rust believes in anything, it's responsibility. That's what being human boils down to—you share in everyone's suffering, and you're complicit in it as well. “I tell myself I bear witness,” he says, when Marty inevitably asks why, if there's no point to anything, he bothers to get up in the morning. No one earns his contempt more quickly than those who turn a blind eye, who simply shrug and get back to their lives when a neighborhood girl goes missing. Rust can be callous and even downright cruel—he straight-up tells a suspect who's confessed to the murder of her infant daughter that she should kill herself—but he refuses to look away from the evils of the world. “For a guy who sees no point in existence,” Marty observes while Rust's pausing for breath during a tirade against religion,“you sure fret about it an awful lot.” And he's right: despite his insistence that extinction would be an improvement on the human condition, Rust has a stake in humanity.


Canon Abilities/Skills:

Survival/Wilderness Skills: Rust was raised in a remote part of Alaska by his father, a Vietnam vet who took self-reliance to extremes. From a young age, the skills necessary for survival in a harsh, inhospitable environment were ingrained in him: he knows how to track game and bow hunt, how to navigate without the aid of a compass, how to monitor and assess his own functioning and perform rudimentary medical procedures. Even when he's not in a survival situation, he's acutely aware of his surroundings.

Police Training: Rust has roughly a decade of police work under his belt, in a variety of departments—vice, robbery, narcotics, and homicide. He's proficient with most firearms (he carries a Glock, but has no trouble handling a machine gun when the situation demands) and skilled at physical combat. He's well versed in investigative and interrogative techniques (in fact, he's almost preternaturally good at wringing confessions from suspects) and has supplemented this knowledge with a compendium of books on serial killers.

His time undercover lent itself to the cultivation of an entirely different skillset—he can lie convincingly on the fly, work up a concoction that when injected simulates track marks, ride a motorcycle, and do all sorts of questionable shit. He knows a fair amount of Spanish (very little of it polite) as well.

Synesthesia: Not really a skill or ability per se, but Rust has synesthesia, a kind of sensory cross-wiring that, in his case, results in colors triggering tastes as well as various sensations—he specifically references touch and smell—triggering sounds. Driving through the countryside, he remarks that the environs put the taste of aluminum and ash in his mouth, “like you can smell the psychosphere.”

Drawing: He's pretty decent.

ON STATION 72
Symbiote Specialization: Rho
Symbiote Ability: Self-control eradication. At a touch, Rust can rupture a subject's self-restraint, bringing the strongest of their suppressed impulses to the fore (in more advanced stages of the ability, he'll be able to amplify that impulse as well). The effect is always abrupt—he can't slowly sap someone's willpower, only break it entirely. He has no control over what the subject might be feeling, and no ability (beyond what he'd ordinarily be capable of) to otherwise influence their behavior.

This can be used on adversaries—to push them to their breaking point, compromising them mentally or emotionally—or fellow hosts—to overcome mental blocks or give them a burst of strength (or to fuck them up, I guess, if Rust decides to be a huge dick).

At all levels, he will black out as soon as the ability takes effect—how long this lasts will depend on how developed his skills are. Also at all levels, the subject will be physically exhausted once the effect wears off.

Oh, and finally: Rust will only be capable of using his ability when he feels threatened.

RANK ONE
-Blackout lasts an hour
-Rust experiences what's basically an emotional hangover—he's stuck with the (generally less-than-pleasant) residue of whatever impulse he brought out in the other person, though it fades after 24 hours or if he eats greasy food


RANK TWO
+Can delay the effect for up to 30 seconds
+Can amplify the impulse by up to 10%
- Blackout lasts 8 hours
- Emotional hangover is twice as intense

RANK THREE
+ Rust only needs to have touched the subject at some point
+ Can delay the effect for up to two minutes
+ Can amplify the impulse by up to 50%
-Blackout lasts a day
-Emotional hangover is even more intense. It diminishes over time but never completely subsides, potentially leaving him with all sorts of conflicting emotional debris.




Inventory:
The clothes on his back, his wallet, cigarettes, and lighter.

SAMPLES
Samples: uno and dos

Rescue Write-up:
His commendation for bravery came with a fucking certificate; Rust folded it in two and shoved it in his glovebox. He remembers it now as he stomps the brake, the pickup shrieking like it's halfway alive. Impact. The truck wrenches sideways, noise turns to percussion and Rust blips out of consciousness.

He comes to with his face in the floor, a crumpled cigarette pack the first thing he sees, thinking not too bad over and over like he can haul himself up by the words. He uses the seat instead, scrambling, his heart hammering. The windshield is gone. Not broken, gone. No glass. He looks outside—

Light. Low. Blue. At first he thinks it hurts his eyes, but the longer he stares, the less localized it feels. The more it feels like being pried open.

The air's sheer when he breathes. Could be he busted a rib.

The light flickers deliberately, then begins to spread.

( Run.)

Without looking away Rust spits blood, notes distantly that one of his teeth's cracked. “No.”

( Are you ready to die? )

Not for the first time, he hesitates.

( No you're not. ) Contempt seeps into the voice, into Rust's head. ( Come on. )

Somebody opens the door. When they pull him out, he runs.