Spencer Cox

[Spencer Cox]

The Basics

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Name: Spencer John Cox
Nicknames: Spence. There are some nasty nicknames concerning his height but he’d rather not list them all.
Age: 35
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: Postie Mailman
Powers: “Night” Vision. Spencer has the ability to see in the dark as though the area is well-lit. He is able to activate it of his own free will. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually enhance his vision, just how much ‘light’ he perceives. Hence the necessity for glasses. Despite the name, he is able to use the power to see in any dark area. Under the bed looking for his glasses, for instance. He likes to say that this sort of power is “like driving” - once you know how to do it, you can use it on ‘autopilot’ without even really having to think about it. However, while he has excellent control over his power, if he is unfocused for any reason (tiredness, heightened emotional strain), he cannot activate it.

Side-effects include restlessness in the night, tiredness during the day, migraines with aura, aesthenopia (eye strain, which itself has its own symptoms such as double vision, blurred vision and headaches).
Play By: Stephen Merchant

The Details

Hair Color: Dark blond
Eye Color: Blue
Any Piercings? Um... yes. A navel piercing. He thought it would be funny. Not so much when the bars catch on things and rip half your flesh off. So he’s letting that one heal over.
Any Tattoos? Nope.
Any Scars? A scar on the back of one hand from punching a door (after throwing one hell of a tantrum in his teen years), a silvery burn mark that used to read “issunaZ” after a bizarre tumble dryer malfunction, a rough-looking indentation underneath his ribcage, a wide scar on the back of his head which you can't actually see unless you start messing with his hair, old scald marks on his thighs.
General Appearance:
The first thing anyone notices about Spencer is his height, which makes him somewhat self-conscious. Standing at six feet and seven (and a bit) inches, his thin, lanky frame gives him a sort of malnourished appearance, or so people tell him. This is not a compliment no matter how you say it and he really doesn’t understand people who think that ‘wow! you look anorexic!’ is a nice thing to say. And also he doesn’t feel he looks anorexic at all.

The next thing is the eyes. Big, bright, bulging and blue, they’re as hard to miss as his considerable height. Even if they are usually hidden behind his plastic-framed glasses. With dark blond (or light brown, maybe? It depends on the light, or so he insists) hair, his facial hair is surprisingly thick and dark. He doesn’t always keep the facial hair either, but he doesn’t really have a preference either way. Sometimes he feels like he should have one and other times it’s just unnecessary. He hasn’t yet worked out under what circumstances do his preferences change. The hair on his head will be preferably quite short and, again, depending on the occasion, with be either brushed to one side or loosely styled.

Because he’s so tall, Spencer has a hard time finding clothes that fit him properly. Many clothes that fit his height are too big for him. He supposes manufacturers must believe that tall people are also broad people. Or vice versa. Sometimes the clothes that fit snugly are too... short. Whatever the case, there are still too many items in his wardrobe that don’t really fit, and coupled with his height, this fact makes him feel a little self-conscious.

Underneath the ill-fitting clothing, he has many scars that he used to be embarrassed by, but now feels nothing for. The ones on his thighs, a tiny mark underneath his ribcage, the old mark from the tumble-dryer. All souvenirs from an unhealthy, abusive relationship. It’s okay, he likes to insist. The events are all in the past, and he’s sick of staring at himself in the mirror, looking back on it all. He’d rather look forward now, once more searching the skies for inspiration.

Personality:
Gentle and quiet, Spencer has always found it difficult to stand up for himself. He really isn’t able to hold grudges. At all. Sure, if someone says something about the clothes that don’t fit or a mistake he made (“this isn’t my mail! can’t you read?!”), he’ll be really upset with himself for a while, but the next day, he’s over it and ready to try again. Despite his quiet nature and the fact that he’s easily intimidated by social situations, he sometimes finds himself talking... a lot. Usually out of nervousness and to fill silences. These can be long monologues interspersed with nervous laughs and reassuring the other person that they can “always tell [him] to shut up”.

He’s always writing some new novel, but even though he’s a dreamer who really wants to make it as a novelist, his pitiful attention span for such things often prevents him from ever completing that awesome novel he just thought about or the hilarious script he laid out a plot for. One month, he might have an idea about a dragon who has to overcome societal stigma in order to function as an accountant, but within a few weeks to a few months, writer’s block begins, he can see just how silly the idea even is and throws it all out, ready to start the cycle again. Something of a dreamer, he spends much of his day with his head in the clouds and not really noticing too much of what’s going on around him.

A former domestic abuse victim, Spencer feels as though he can finally put that point in his life behind him and start over with a clean slate. Letting himself hate her will only result in himself being miserable. Forgiving her and feeling nothing towards her one way or the other, he believes that he’ll be able to forget her eventually. He certainly hopes that he’ll never let it happen to him again, and he does worry that he won’t recognise the signs if it does start with someone new. Though it’s been six years and two healthy relationships since he was finally able to leave his abuser, he does occasionally still react to certain triggers with fear. If doors are opened or closed suddenly or slammed, for instance, he tends to jump and panic. People raising their hand too quickly often notice him shying away as though he fears they’ll lash out at him. When these things happen, he brushes it off and won’t make a big deal of it. The only people who need to know about Jen are potential lovers and close friends.

Spencer has a tendency to just blurt out his own secrets at random when he’s feeling nervous or doesn’t know how to handle a situation. Not in the way that, if he feels uncomfortable he simply shouts about his “experiences” with male friends. As an example, if someone he works with laments that they don’t know what to do about their significant other’s odd fetish, he’ll probably attempt to hand wave the problem by regaling that person with stories about, say, robot fetishism. It would get worse when he tries explaining his own (limited) attraction to (certain fictional) robots, then trying to save the situation by explaining that he’s not attracted to, say, televisions or anything, but ultimately failing and coming out looking like a pervert who lusts after iPhones and tries to hold dirty conversations with Cleverbot. He’s always been a little bit socially awkward and rarely knows when to shut up, occasionally needing a little guidance from someone a little more savvy than himself.

Your Vices

Likes:
+ Writing
+ The Internet
+ Comic books
+ Dogs
+ Technology. No, not in the way described above...
+ Cats, but he’s allergic
+ Video games - he was quite upset at selling/giving away his games and consoles before moving to America. He figured it would be better (read:cheaper) than lugging absolutely everything over with him. He did manage to keep the Commodore 64.
+ Reading
+ Online role-playing
+ TV Tropes
+ Fan fiction
+ Flowers! but he’s allergic to pollen, so...
+ Suits, because he feels like some badass assassin while wearing one. Even if he doesn’t get the chance to wear one often, and nor does he currently own one.
+ My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Twilight Sparkle is best pony.
Dislikes:
- Being jolted out of a daydream. How rude.
- Doctors prescribing him penicillin or codeine-based medicines. He’s quite allergic.
- Hayfever.
- Having so many allergies.
- “How’s the weather up there?” and other stupid height-related jokes. Weather’s great up here, actually; shame you’re missing it all the way down there.
- The smell of cut grass. It makes him feel physically sick for some reason.
- “Aren’t you a little old for X?” No. No he’s not.
- American chocolate. So much so that he gets family and friends to send him his favourites from the UK. Every once in a while an old friend sends him a box of random Cadbury’s bars.
- Rain. Or rather, he hates getting soaked to the bone and arriving at his destination looking like a drowned rat.
- American copies of British TV shows. Can’t they just... watch the British ones?
- Wasps. He’s allergic to those, too.
Strengths:
> Enduring, tenacious. Is confident that he will achieve his dream of being a published writer. Maybe even writing for comic books, who knows?
> Ambitious and undeterred by failure.
> A very big imagination.
> Kind and warm-hearted.
Weaknesses:
> Tends to take things too much to heart. For example, if someone comments on a tiny mistake he’s made or even just the way he looks at something, he’ll be upset about it all day.
> Finds it difficult to stand up for himself.
> Socially awkward, he doesn’t always know what he can say without attracting looks of scorn or disbelief. Or, as is more often the case, when to stop speaking.
> Constantly daydreaming and easily distracted by his own thoughts.
Fears:
> Dying alone.
> Thunderstorms.
> People not understanding him.
> Not achieving his life’s goals.
Secret:
The domestic abuse thing is a pretty big secret. If he has to tell someone, he will, though.

Family Ties

Father:
Gerald Cox, 57, watchmaker
Mother:
Linda Cox (née Armstrong), 53, housewife
Siblings:
Richard Cox, 31
Darren Cox, 27, bank manager
Maria Cox, 18, university student
Paula Cox, 15, Hammel student
Any Other Important People:
Jen Masterson, 34, civil servant (Spencer’s abusive ex-wife)

History

Born in Bristol, England to watchmaker Gerald and his wife Linda, Spencer was unexpected, but not unwanted. The tiny, two-person family had, at the time, barely enough money to keep them going over the winter in which he arrived, but they were determined that their child was going to be the best-kept baby boy in all of Bristol. While the result of their efforts back then is still rather debatable, since he’s still alive it’s obvious that they managed somehow.

Growing up, he was always the odd one out with his peers. Unusually tall for his age while at school with no signs of ever stopping, he was quite happy in his own skin until some other boy called him a freak and a giant. After that point it became quite difficult to convince him otherwise, and the other kids at school started to join in. He was a freakish talking lamppost or some kind of spider-baby. In recent years he’s been called Slender Man, but he can live with that one. Just like any other boy with a wild imagination and a motor mouth, he developed a love of comics and superheroes, and talked at great length about developing some amazing power. Unlike some people he knew, no-one in his family had exhibited signs of powers except one aunt on some far, far side of the family they never talked about, so as far as he knew for then his dream would stay just that.

When he was thirteen years old, the dream became reality.

Told to go to bed (lights out, no talking) one evening, as with most evenings actually, he instead got comfortable under the covers and switched his torch on so that he could read his comic. About halfway through one particularly wordy panel, the light dimmed and then flickered off. Which was, of course, annoying, because he would be tossing and turning all night if he couldn’t finish the page he was on. Putting his head to the pillow... he fell asleep pretty quickly. When he woke up later, drowsy and desperate for the toilet, he got up, walked into the bathroom, did what he had to and then paused for a moment. Not a single light was on - his parents turned every light off at night - so why did every room look well-lit? It was like it was daytime or something. Checking the clock in his parents’ bedroom, he was extremely puzzled to discover that it was 2am. Nowhere near time for the sun to be up. That, and all the blinds and windows were closed. So... that must have meant that, somehow, Spencer had been bitten by some sort of radioactive bat and gained night vision! Brilliant!

He managed to keep his power a secret for maybe five days, when a recruiter from Kocher turned up at the house. The lady had a funny accent and Spence was nearly as tall as her, that he distinctly remembers. She explained to his parents that he was quite special indeed, and that he would need to go to the meta school for his own safety. His parents didn’t really understand, and his mother wondered why he needed training to control night vision of all things, but if it was for his own good, they knew they had to send him away. The boy kicked up a fuss, not wanting to go all the way overseas with a strange lady and without his mum and dad. And he’d never see his school friends again. Even when they managed to calm him down enough to pack a suitcase he tried to stuff Mitsy, their Jack Russell terrier, into it. Convincing him to leave the poor pup behind, his parents quickly hid his brothers before he tried to abscond with either of them instead.

Spencer struggled with languages and even though there were facilities for English speakers who were unable to speak French, German or Italian, he was constantly teased and mocked by other kids, being such an easy target. The school itself asked for a transfer to Hammel, his parents not really knowing much about it and so not knowing how to handle the situation. Spencer, however, did not want to move. He was miserable at Kocher, but he was already far enough from home. He didn’t want to end up even further from his family, all alone in some weird country, being poked and prodded by the horrible local kids. At Hammel, he attracted more unwanted attention. He was even stalked by some crazy Canadian girl who liked his accent and liked to call them as a pair “Spenceleigh”, as it was his name and hers mixed together. Crazy, crazy girl. However, he managed to settle in and while his grades weren’t outstanding and his reports always came back “stares out the window all day every day”, he managed to make it into university to study English literature back in Bristol.

It was at uni where Spencer finally came out of his shell and started making friends, dating and ‘making errors in judgement’. Also studying, but that always seemed to come after dreaming, socialising and scribbling his thoughts into a journal. Not all of them interesting or worthwhile, but he liked them enough to keep note. He wrote so much that, when he ran out of paper from the separate pads he bought for his novel writing, he would just continue in the university notebooks. Once he even Tipp-Exed three (double-sided) pages worth of English notes in order to quickly scrawl an idea he’d had for an awesome comic book hero who had the power to control dust.

He scraped a pass for his first year classes, and then failed the second year. Deciding that the universe was trying to tell him something, he dropped out of uni and started working to pay back his student loans. He wasn’t worried, though. He had his imagination and his drive to succeed, and whenever he wasn’t working he was writing and scribbling. Sometimes he did so at whatever job he had at the time. He even managed to sneakily scribble some character notes while clearing a petrol station forecourt. However, since dropping out, Spencer’s love life had pretty much dried up, and as much as he tried to pretend that he was fine with that and that he didn’t need a partner to feel good about himself, he often wondered if he was going to be forever alone.
Then he met Jen. She was a civil servant, and pretty serious about moving up the chain, but she loved to have fun, she was artsy, she loved all the same movies as Spencer and she was drop dead gorgeous at 5ft 5 with red hair and the greenest eyes. He fell quickly in love with her, and they started dating.

Jen was dominant and powerful, and he admired that about her. Yes, she could be physical, and she pulled his hair and prodded him sometimes... on occasion she slapped him for doing silly things and yelled when he chose the wrong colour bedding, but she was only playing around, wasn’t she? She didn’t mean anything by it. She always apologised... She never meant it, ever. She was allowed to have bad days. And... periods... happened, too. Even the vicious things she said to him every now and then about his height or his weight or even the way he shaved weren’t that bad, were they? No, of course not. He loved her, and she really did love him. Or so he kept telling himself anyway.

At twenty-five, he married Jen. It was a beautiful ceremony, even if it had been stressful, even if the arrangements had been hell to sort out, even if she’d blamed him when her dress initially didn’t fit. Even if she nearly pushed him down the stairs of their shiny new home when she became frustrated with his suggestions. She didn’t mean to do it. It was the stress. Now that they were married, things would surely be different. And they could have children and pets and a perfect, stable marriage. Everything would be fine, wouldn’t it?

As time went on, Jen became more and more vicious and less patient. If he disagreed with her, she’d hit him, and hard. She started breaking his things during arguments, including his glasses. And it was all his fault. “Why do you make things so difficult?” she’d sob, and he’d console her and agree that he was a terrible person who didn’t deserve her companionship. And he became so “accident prone”. How do you even burn your hand when someone else is cooking? Or stab yourself with someone else’s knife, silly boy. Once he even broke a rib “slipping” on ice when he’d forgotten to put salt on the driveway in winter.

These were the things he told himself anyway, in order to cope. How could he possibly admit what was happening? Never mind to anyone else. Who would believe him? Besides, he was tall, at least one foot taller than her. So he must have been stronger than her. He should have been able to defend himself. He shouldn’t have been so upset by this when it was all preventable. Besides... What damage could she really do? Despite his family becoming suspicious, he denied that there were problems. Up until the day she pushed him down the stairs. Having sustained a head injury and a broken wrist, he began to feel that his life was in danger. Still he refused to say anything, but it was his brother Richard who made him spill the beans. Convincing him that he had to go to the police about her, they went together. Spencer felt that he couldn’t go without some form of support Predictably, being a tall, Bristolian male, he wasn’t taken seriously at the station. For a while, he moved in with his brother before returning home, Jen insisting that things would be better and that she was sorry. He really shouldn’t have believed her. For two more years she subjected him to intimidation and violence, Spencer never once lifting a finger to defend himself. Each time the police were called, Jen accused Spencer of starting it by becoming aggressive towards her, resulting in him being removed from the property. It was beginning to look hopeless and he eventually stopped trying to get the police to believe him.

In 2005, Spencer made some hard decisions, and finally plucked up the courage to leave. She did not take it kindly. She started breaking his things, telling him that with nothing to his name, he’d never survive without her. Though he had begun to think that it was true, he still managed to walk away. He was all over the place emotionally, but he was getting help with the aid of his brother, and things were already looking much brighter. Not long after leaving, he tried to initiate divorce proceedings, but Jen was still bitter and controlling and she refused. Undeterred, Spencer said he was more than happy to wait as long as he needed to.

Three years was eventually the length of time he waited for. Jen, having found a new boyfriend, ultimately decided that she should be the one to divorce him. Spencer celebrated the news with his new girlfriend by his side. Jen got to keep just about everything, but since that included most of the bills as well, he didn’t care.

Years went by and Spencer recovered slowly, bit by bit, with the support of his family, friends and, when he had one, his girlfriend. He started writing passionately again and took up roleplaying online. He played video games, socialised and enjoyed a drink or two every now and then. For the first time in years he felt normal.He even paid off the loans he’d taken out while living with Jen and now had no ties to her at all. Unfortunately, his second girlfriend since the divorce also decided to leave him. And his younger sister developed a power and was off to Hammel. Richard went with her to keep an eye on her... but Spencer sort of suspected that he was actually teaching her how to rig school-wide practical jokes. Suddenly, people were disappearing around him. It made him wonder if he should do the same. For inspiration!

In the end, he decided it was time to move on. Or rather, to move back. Finding a small apartment in Pilot Ridge, he’s still getting used to finding his way around the residential areas. Hey, he has to know ‘em like the back of his hand if he wants to be a good postman.

Roleplay Example

Maybe have a look at Mitya? Or Michael; he’s pretty outstanding. Oh, or what about Kanda? And there’s always Nathan.

What About You?

Name: Tis a Lilac!
Age: 22. ish.
Experience: It’s been a long time.
How Did You Find Us? I shot a blue portal onto the moon’s surface and you were there :\
Ready To Play? No; I can't find my glasses.

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[James *]

Accepted!

Fabulous. You know what to do.

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