Ricky O'Cassidy
Nov 18, 2013 12:33:21 GMT -5
Post by Ricky O'Cassidy on Nov 18, 2013 12:33:21 GMT -5
The BasicsName: Patrick Shamus O'Cassidy
Nicknames: Ricky
Age: 48
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: Hammel Administrative Accountant
Powers: Non-powered
Play By: Sean BeanThe DetailsHair Color: Dirty blonde and graying a little
Eye Color: Green
Any Piercings? No
Any Tattoos? Well, yes, but... it's a long story.
Any Scars? A few, but nothing from serious accidents. Lots of funny stories, though.
General Appearance: Ricky is a rather ordinary and average-looking fellow, though he does have an absolutely lovely smile (according to his mother and three of his six sisters). Not terribly tall (5'9") nor terribly athletic, he's just about right for his age at not skinny but without a lot of paunch. His dirty blonde hair is kind of limp when it gets long, and he scruffs really easily, but half the time he simply forgoes the blades anywhere near his face and keeps a reasonable level of constant scruffiness. In short, Ricky's... he's... well, average.
In terms of style, he seems to have very little day-to-day - suits that fit well for work, ties and vests that match his eyes, and high-shine shoes that always seem to get scuffed. Outside of work is mostly jeans, t-shirts, and comfy sweaters (some hand-knitted, some crocheted!), and any sort of date would be pretty relaxed right in the middle with chinos and a nice dress shirt. Once again, totally normal and boringly average... save that he keeps two spare sets of clothes in his car and three at work. But that's a different problem.
He also has a rather large and expansive tattoo across his back, which is really quite a long story but looks REALLY cool despite his reluctance to show it off. The artist made mistake after mistake, and eventually the guy's boss came in and fixed the whole thing into a rather beautiful piece (though the whole took almost all his college time to finish). It's a little silly, since it has bright colors everywhere, but it ended up looking like a picture out of a storybook. Actually, you can see it here!
Personality: Much like his appearance, Ricky's personality isn't much of anything special. Generally polite and easy-going, he can laugh or shrug off pretty much anything without worry. He's a dedicated worker, and he tries to keep things neat and tidy though like anyone else he can forget and fall lax on chores. He's not really any sort of emotional trainwreck, he's never had anything super traumatic happen in his life, and he rarely gets upset enough to start anything. He may be Irish-American, but his sisters got ALL the temper (as well as their fair share of red hair and curls).
Once again, completely and utterly normal and boring. Oh, he does have a thing that's a little quirky, though - he likes animals, but most days they don't like him, so he tends to stay away from them and put down whatever he's eating or drinking or reading... just in case.
The biggest part of his personality that seems to be overlooked is how oddly careful Ricky is about... well, pretty much everything. He's not terribly adventurous, nor much of a thrill-seeker since he justifies it as "more than exciting in real life without resorting to potentially lethal stunts." He's not a coward - just very pragmatic. But everything he does is fairly meticulous and cautious; where he puts things, how many times he checks the time on multiple devices, how often he scans over documents to clear errors... it's all because of his insanely bad luck. Still, he tries not to be too obsessive about things - just a little quirky.Your VicesLikes:
~Friday night college ball
~Dark beer
~The color yellow
~Homemade pastries (or food in general)
~Animals
~Soccer
~Bumper cars
~Accounting
~Wacky socks (toe socks, fuzzy socks, rainbow socks, printed socks, thigh-high socks, you name it)
~People who laugh off his bad luck with him
Dislikes:
~Under-cooked fish
~Roller coasters
~"Adventurous" things
~Having to do work over again because he missed something
~People who get overly sympathetic about his bad luck
~Tea (give him coffee ANY day)
~Biscotti
Strengths:
~Math - Ricky is an amazing accountant and despite his difficulties is very good at his job. He loves math in general, and hopes to (someday) be an inspiration to future accountants and mathematicians by being a public speaker or a teacher for a basic high school or college course.
~Extroverted - Very friendly a willing to talk to people, Ricky doesn't seem like a normal pencil-pusher at first. He can be witty and jovial, and he doesn't hide from people. He even likes public speaking and gets very energetic during a normal day-to-day conversation.
~Easy-Going - Almost nothing bothers him. Seriously. Water off a duck.
Weaknesses:
~Horrendously Bad Luck - This isn't even a joke, though it is pretty funny. Ricky's been in scrapes of all kinds since he was a kid, and nothing in the universe can stop him from getting into more. Actually, it seems like the universe is trying to get him into more, just to see how long it'll take until something finally kills him off. He's a Murphy's Law magnet, and the only reason why he isn't dead is because he seems to be preternaturally affected in the opposite direction during the course of such events. Examples will be described in detail in the History section.
~Rough and Tumble - Despite not being a terribly angry person nor having much of a temper, Ricky grew up with eight siblings and knows how to rumble (sort of). His bad luck also seems to get him into (and out of) more bar fights than he'd care to admit.
~Reverse Animal Magnetism - Animals do not like him. Seriously. Animals of all kinds just don't seem to like his presence, even ones that are normally sweet little critters. Unless he needs to be somewhere very shortly and has no spare change of clothes, in which case they seem to want to put hair and mud all over him. This may or may not apply to shifters as well, but he hasn't tested that theory too closely.
Fears: His mother. (Don't laugh, she's SCARY.)
Secret: Umm... he has a thing for garter belts and thigh-highs? Oh! And he got into accounting on accident - he meant to be an English teacher.Family TiesFather: Shamus Ryan O'Cassidy, III
Mother: Marienne Elizabeth O'Cassidy
Siblings:
Shamus Ryan O'Cassidy, IV (older brother)
Finnigan James O'Cassidy (older brother)
Elizabeth Marie O'Cassidy (older sister)
Alastrionna Lyra O'Cassidy (older sister)
Deirdre Mackenzie O'Cassidy (younger sister)
Brianna Caitlin & Brigit Cathleen O'Cassidy (twin younger sisters)
Moira Sinead O'Cassidy (younger sister)
Shuan Aiden O'Cassidy (younger brother)
Any Other Important People:
Elizabeth Moira O'Cassidy (his grandmother, deceased)
All his nieces and nephews and cousins and aunts and uncles (HUGE family)
Alexis Renee Carpenter (his ex-fiance)HistoryPatrick Shamus O'Cassidy is the middle child of a large family, one that seems to go on forever and forever. Before she passed away, his grandmother even used to say that it was doubtful that they were unrelated to any Irish-descended in the United States (though that may be stretching it a little bit). They're based in New York, but much of the extended family lives all across the United States, and there's a goodly chunk that live across the water still in Ireland. He may or may not have some of those extended relations in Kocher, but thus far he's never heard of anyone in his family attending Hammel as a student.
Born on April 1st at 1:13pm, Ricky was probably the cheeriest baby anyone could ever have and one of the most trouble. Not that he ever really did anything to earn that notion, but it's hard to argue when a long laundry list of hospital visits and accidents prove the point. Surprisingly enough, he was never seriously injured enough for an extended stay, and during his early childhood only broke three bones (both in his right arm from falling out of a tree into a pile of leaves, and one in his foot from stumbling around in the dark while camping). All in all, he was just a normal happy child, who just happened to have a greater than average amount of mishaps. His parents attributed it to being a middle child of ten and a boy, as well as growing up in a big city, so no one thought anything of it.
At twelve, Ricky was in an accident where he was crossing the street and was hit by a bus. Surprisingly enough, the boy was turned away and the bus slowing as it hit him, causing him to bounce harmlessly from the front bumper into a lightpost. He still has a small scar on his chin from the accident, but there was no lasting damage. Additionally, he'd been on his way to school and worried because he hadn't finished a homework assignment - he was given a couple extra days, during which he finished it (and got a B+).
The incident, however, was the family's first introduction to the Hammel Institute. Since the accident was used as part of an reason to hire more transit employees (and thus cut down on intercity accidents due to overworked bus drivers), there was a small notice in the paper. A few days later, a recruiter stopped by from the institute, spoke with his parents about the possibility of him being a metahuman, and tested the boy.
The results from the test came back negative. This apparently was very rare for Hammel to encounter, so they did the test twice more and brought in a power's identifier as well. All tests were negative, and the identifier didn't pick up anything at all. Ricky was just plain lucky - both in bad and good varieties. With an apology to the family for the mix-up, the recruiters left, and the O'Cassidy's have never had another encounter with the facility as a family again. (They did, however, learn a lot about metas and become much more proactive in the community for their rights, despite all being baselines.)
The luck streaks were continually things out of the most hilarious drunken stories; things too funny to be true, but too ridiculous to have been made up. When taking his SATs in senior year, his first test was accidentally ruined by a spilled cup of coffee (which was all right, because apparently the scorer malfunctioned before his and graded about fifty tests incorrectly). The second was lost (along with sixteen others) in a paper jam, and his third test finally passed through just in time for him to apply to colleges. This allowed him to squeak in on merit, as his grades were decently high especially in mathematics and his test scores were astounding. (After taking that test three times in as many months, wouldn't YOURS be?)
Unfortunately, most of the colleges he applied for on the East Coast either had filled up or wouldn't take him for what he and his family could pay in tuition. Same thing with most of the schools in the Midwest, and when he finally found a college three years later that would accept him with a few grants, it was in California - UC: Berkeley. At this point, Ricky wanted to be a public speaker, or maybe even a literature teacher since he loved to read. Berkeley would be a wonderful fit, right?
Apparently not - after missing his flight and only barely making summer registration, the Irish young man had to find work while his papers were hunted down (they were never found). He had a place to stay with a family friend, but only for the summer until he could land a spot in the dorms. While he refiled his submissions (this time for the fall term), a glitch in the system erased him from the major he was in, and after some pulling and tweaking the office managed to get things up and running again. Fortunately, he was still enrolled. Unfortunately, rather than being in the English program, his name had been shuffled and resubmitted into the mathematics program. Specifically, an accounting program. Considering his aptitude with numbers and general luck with such things, Ricky didn't try to get it changed, opting instead to just start the year with what he had.
The friends he'd made during the summer (as rowdy a bunch as he was) decided that they were going to treat the blonde Irishman to a night of drinking, football, and carousing to soothe his battered ego, and the group went out on the town. Of course, as such stories go, Ricky was insanely sloshed by the time someone had the great idea of getting him a tattoo.
You know, for good luck.
The next morning, Ricky found out what happened from the owner of the tattoo parlor, whose table he'd been sleeping on all night. The group walked in and told the artist on duty that he wanted something suitably Irish and lucky. Ricky himself suggested a stone Celtic knot in the shape of a clover. They had the misfortune of finding the newest member of the team who (while a good hand) was not terribly good at intricate details. Still, rather than turn down business to wait for his boss to get back, the guy accepted... and proceeded over the next two hours to make mistake after mistake. It actually got SO bad, when the guy's boss returned to find a number of drunk folk staggering out of his shop, he went in and found almost all of his new customer's rib line and shoulders covered in tangled knotwork.
After six MORE hours of clean-up and fixing, Ricky had been asleep for half the session and now had a good frame for what would end up being his amazing tattoo. (Fortunately, being on his back, he didn't have to worry about his job firing him for having visible body art. He also only had to pay half price for the trouble.)
Five years later, after working through his degree slowly but surely (and gaining an awesome tattoo along the way), Ricky graduated from Berkeley and started looking for work. A lot of his options ended up not panning out right away (figures, huh?), so he stayed in California a while and kept up on his current job. After about four years, just when things were getting a little prohibitive in the expense department, another alumni hooked him up with a bit of information - the Hammel Institute of all places was taking on an administrative accountant.
Hey, why the heck not? After a good three years, a solid apprenticeship in New York (where he met and unfortunately was dumped by his fiance), and getting the right CPA license for Vermont, he was hired in 2003 and has been working at the school for metahumans ever since. He still has the regular levels of shenanigans, but with so much other crazy stuff happening, he feels relatively normal and comfortable here.
This June will mark his fifteenth year at the Institute, and though he's not a very memorable person, he certainly loves his work.Roleplay ExampleOh lordie, I don't think you want to read ANOTHER wall o' text right now. xDWhat About You?Name: Kallisti~<3
Age: I'ma golden apple that's an artefact of ancient Greece. xD What do you think?
Experience: Years.
How Did You Find Us? Insanity and madness.
Ready To Play? Well… I suppose. :3
