Post by g. anderson best on May 5, 2012 22:44:28 GMT -5
[/justify]GRESHAM ANDERSON BEST
| B A S I C S |
Name Gresham Anderson Best
Nicknames He actually goes by “G. Anderson Best” and everyone calls him Anderson. He has no other nicknames. Don’t try to call him Andy. It is Anderson.
PB Sean Maher
Age 38
Major Criminal Justice [he has a masters]
Sex Male
Occupation Head Homicide Detective
Hometown Fort Lauderdale, Florida| P E R S O N A L I T Y |
Anderson has had a stick up his ass ever since he was a child. Even young, he liked things to go a specific way and follow the rules. He was the perfect hall monitor in school and that one guy who would always report rule breakers and miscreants. People had to be careful around him because he was a stickler and he has remained a stickler through his entire life—this is what makes him the perfect cop. He would rather die than not go by the book on something and you can bet that if G. Anderson Best is on the case, there is no chance of any foul play on his part. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to bend the rules in his favor when he is the enforcer of them. He will gladly cite a driver for going five miles over the speed limit and then turn around and speed as soon as he’s off duty. Fortunately, he’s not a traffic cop and hasn’t been since two years after his graduation from the academy, so the people of Orange Island can still speed as much as they want to—you know, relatively.
Anderson has learned to rely on himself and only himself. He is extremely confident in his abilities as a detective and as a cop, but not so much in any other area of life. He has very low self esteem in regards to anything other than law enforcement because he has gotten used to rejection and being put down. He's very pessimistic and looks at everything in a glass-half-empty sort of way. Even things like holidays and birthdays hold no joy for him--he ignores them like any other day. He’s an easy target for ridicule because he’s so set in his ways and blustery. He has a hard time dealing with people leaving him and he has gotten progressively meaner to people over the years. He’s as hard on others as he is on himself and expects a high performance level from everyone around him. Failure is both entirely avoidable and unacceptable and an act of failure on anyone’s part—especially his—is a direct assessment of their devotion and skills. There are no outside flukes, only internal flaws, and he judges both himself and others against this harsh scale.
He doesn't always mean to be rude, though. Sometimes, he's just bad at taking social cues. He doesn't do well with reading people unless it's for guilt and he doesn't take well to subtlety. He needs to be hit over the head with social information, like people being gay or dating or even people hitting on him. He's just generally bad in social situations and has never liked parties, large groups of people, double dates, or making friends. He never says the right thing, even when he tries, and the only friends he has are work friends who have grown accustomed to him. Mostly, he just has subordinates and people he tolerates. Even growing up, he had a small group of friends and no more. In the academy, it was easier to make friends, but it was more important to him to be on top and the best than it was to socialize and so he didn't leave with much at all.
One thing most people can say about Anderson is that he is intense and not necessarily in a good way. It works very well when he's on the job--he can intimidate most criminals and he is extremely motivated when it comes to everything involving the law. Unfortunately, he finds it difficult to turn this intensity off and a lot of people find him creepy or unsettling when he has to exist in a world outside of the police department. It can be good, though, when he wants to do something because he puts his whole heart into everything. He's an avid civil war re-enactor, Food Network watcher [when he has time], car auction attender, and history buff. Even if he doesn't like it, he'll put all of his effort into it--he might be ridiculing it every step of the way, but he'll do it, goddammit.
Talents & Skills: Loading/shooting/cleaning a gun, skee ball, cooking. He can identify pretty much any bullet from any gun just by looking at it. He can also identify the gun, but, y'know, that seems like small change compared to the bullets.
Weaknesses: Pffffft. Thinking outside the box, being nice/sympathetic, stinginess.
Likes: guns, weapons, shooting, arresting people, looking professional, history, civil war artifacts, Clint Eastwood, cars, the Food Network.
Dislikes: his ex-wife, women in general because they aren’t trustworthy, dolls, romantic comedies, waiters, teenagers.
| H I S T O R Y |
When Anderson was born, his parents were happily together. This continued until he was about three, when his dad lost his job and found a new one that paid less. At first, they tried to keep their fighting away from Anderson and so he started his childhood thinking he was in a perfectly happy house. After awhile, though, their fighting escalated so much that they couldn't shield their son from it anymore. They fought about everything, including Anderson, and their fights ended in shouting matches so often that they would have to send Anderson outside to play.
Instead of waiting for this, Anderson started hiding out in his room. He didn't have many friends and he got picked on a lot in school, so instead of having play dates or going outside, he holed himself up in his room and watched movies. His parents had put a television in his room when he was five in the hopes that this would mask their fighting and problems and, while it didn't exactly work as planned, it did give Anderson an outlet and coping mechanism as he got older. He started out watching the regularly broadcast programs and whatever movies were on air and then listening to the radio when nothing worked for him. When he was twelve, though, his parents decided to buy him his own VCR.
It seemed, at the time, to be an arbitrary coming of age gift, but Anderson has since realized that it was more of a consolation prize. A week after the VCR was set up on his TV, his parents sat him down and told him that they were having another baby. If Anderson hadn't known his parents better, he would have thought this was a joke. In fact, if Anderson hadn't known science better, he would have thought this was a freak accident. It was real, though--somehow, between all of the fighting, working, leaving the house, and not paying attention to their son, his parents had managed to procreate again.
His parents weren't big movie people and so they didn't have too many. Anderson went through all of their movies quickly while hiding out and ignoring the fact that his parents were irresponsible and had to look elsewhere. His mother's brother had recently moved to town and was spending time at their house most nights. He was a sergeant in the police department and he always had great stories--whether they were real or not, it didn't matter, because all Anderson knew was that his uncle had both time and awesomeness and he had no one to fight with like Anderson's parents. It was his uncle who brought over his first Clint Eastwood movie and then, after Anderson found true love with it, all subsequent Clint Eastwood movies.
Clint Eastwood took away Anderson's problems like nothing else ever had before. Clint was cool, confident, and everything that Anderson wished he was. It would be silly to say that his uncle had no effect on Anderson becoming a cop, but it would also be silly to ignore the effect that Clint had. His newborn sister, too, became a large influence. When Adelaide was born, Anderson didn't have much faith in his parents to be able to raise another child, considering they hardly had time for the one they already had, and he was mostly right. His mother was as attentive to Addy as she'd been to Anderson when he was a baby, and even as a toddler she paid some attention, but she was very busy and fighting with her husband took up a lot of her time when she wasn't avoiding the house. Thus, Anderson became Addy's self-appointed protector.
He was never very parental or nurturing, but as a protector, no one could have had better. Addy rarely hurt herself nor was she ever in want of something to be done and she grew up idolizing her older brother. For his part, Anderson was very upset as they both grew and he realized that he was going to have to go off to college and leave his poor, five year old sister alone with his parents--because he was definitely going off to college. Nothing would make him stay in that house any longer and during his senior year, he applied to every college he thought he could get into. He got into eleven out of thirteen schools, but decided to stay in-state so that he could get the discounted tuition and better scholarships.
The only reason he didn't go for his first summer semester was to spend time with Addy and his uncle. When it was time to go, it was those two that helped him move his few possessions to Tallahassee. Anderson had assured his parents that he did not need them to make the trip--and he had been right. They had much more fun, just the three of them. All Anderson brought with him was one big suitcase and some bedding and it was all he needed. His uncle bought him a water boiler before he and Addy left and then, Anderson was alone.
He and his roommate did not get along. Anderson was used to being alone and liked his solitude and his routines, but the other boy was a jock and a partier and listened to music at all hours, came home drunk at all hours, and always had girls coming in and out. Anderson couldn't deal with it and expected his uncle to agree with him and tell him to complain, but he was surprised at the advice he actually received. College was a one-time thing that he should make the best of. It was this that Anderson took to heart and so tried to get a little bit less up-tight. His roommate was happy to have another party buddy, even if he was lame and a loser, and soon, he had found Anderson his first girlfriend.
Anderson had never been good with girls and he assumed that this would just continue through life, but it turned out that partiers liked guys that were aloof and attractive. Anderson wasn't necessarily gorgeous, but he had a nice face and, under the careful guidance of his roommate, he started working out. Through his life, he had always been into walking places and jogging, but he had never done a concentrated workout and he found himself getting toned. His first girlfriend came and went in about a month, when Anderson realized she was a ditz and he couldn't stand listening to her talk about pop music, but once he was both socially awkward [read: aloof and hard to please] and ripped, he had girls lining upish.
His next girlfriend was a little less intolerable, but really, there was no one in his roommate's crowd that he liked. She, however, was a psychology major and they at least had some classes in common. He broke up with her a week after she took his virginity, realizing that he couldn't just be in a relationship for sex. He wasn't good at dealing with people he didn't like and he found that this sort of relationship grated on his nerves. He still didn't like his roommate much either and after his second girlfriend, he all but broke up with him, too.
When it finally came time to move out of the dorm, he was upset that he had to go home for so long. Luckily, though, he was moving into an apartment so he wouldn't have to leave on holidays or anything if he didn't want to. He spent the summer at home, working at a warehouse and building up funds to get through the next school year. He spent the next two years in his apartment, only going home when he had to. Sometimes, his uncle and Addy came up to visit and sometimes, when he came home, he would only stay with his uncle.
He graduated a year early and applied instantly to both graduate school and a police academy. Though he'd had a few girlfriends in his undergrad, they'd all ended with breakups that left both parties feeling awkward and unpleasant, so he determined to be done with women at least until school was over. Orange Island was closer to his home, so his free time was spent with Addy and his uncle. He rarely saw his parents because they were rarely there when he came to visit and he didn't have much time to sit around and wait, due to being in the academy during the day and taking classes at night.
Addy repeatedly told him, however, that they were having more and more problems. They'd been holding on to a dead marriage for over twenty years and it was getting to the point where it they couldn't keep the pieces together. Anderson knew something was wrong when his father drove to his apartment on the island and took him out for drinks. They bonded that night, sharing stories about relationships and talking for the first time after his father told him about the upcoming divorce. He stayed in Anderson's apartment that night because he wasn't sober enough to drive and the next morning, when Anderson awoke prepared to get breakfast, his father was gone and that was the end of their relationship.
His parents got a divorce and Anderson continued at school. His uncle and Addy came to visit more often, just to keep Addy out of the house during all the proceedings. It was on one of these visits while the three of them were out to eat that his uncle met a woman--a waitress, just a few years younger than him, also never been married. Anderson was miffed when they started dating, but since he was an adult, he couldn't rage like he wanted to. He wished Addy would, but Addy was glad to finally have a feminine woman around and she thought their romance was adorable. She was the happiest of the two of them when their uncle announced that he and his girlfriend were engaged.
A few months later, they were married. It was a small ceremony, just their family and close friends, and Anderson was the best man. He'd been to the shooting range at the police academy a lot since the announcement of the engagement and since come to terms with the fact that his uncle had a woman in his life and was extremely happy. He was certainly happier than Anderson had ever seen his parents and this helped him get over it. The problem with this was that, once they were married, they started to get restless and it wasn't a month after they came back from their honeymoon that his uncle drove by himself over to Orange Island and announced that they were moving to Maryland.
Anderson spent all of his free time the next week at the shooting range. This could be one of the reasons that he is the excellent shot that he is--but he chooses to ignore that week because he also spent a lot of it with a bottle of gin. He gave his uncle his blessing, though he certainly didn't mean it, and he even eventually drove over to Fort Lauderdale to help them pack up their house. It was a stoic goodbye on Anderson's part, though Addy cried, and everyone promised to visit each other. They did try to do this, but traveling was expensive and Anderson was a poor college student. Still, each one managed to fly up or down at least once a year and they still try to do this.
When Anderson was 24, he was ready to graduate from both the police academy and Orange Island University with his masters in criminal justice. Both of his parents, his sister, and his uncle and new aunt were at the ceremony, as well as another woman that Anderson assumed was his father's new girlfriend. He was annoyed, as he walked for his diploma [something he had never done in undergrad], that no one had bothered to tell him, but it became apparent later, when they were having a celebratory dinner, why they hadn't. No one had told Addy, either, who was now twelve, and so his mother sat them both down. She introduced the woman as Sophia and her new girlfriend.
If this had been the only thing that had happened in the past few years, Anderson might have been able to deal with it. As it was, it was like the cherry on top of the sundae that was all the shit going on in his life and he exploded. It wasn't so much the fact that she was just now telling her 24 year old son that she was a lesbian as it was that she had just divorced her husband and was already in a serious relationship. She'd spent twenty-four years unhappy--Anderson didn't see how she could possibly just up and start dating again. He said some things that he regrets, but perhaps he wouldn't have said them if his mother had ever made a bigger effort to be a mother.
So, with one member of the family not speaking to him and one in Maryland, Anderson was left with Addy and his father--who was still more of an absent presence. He got a job as a traffic cop, putting in more hours than strictly allowed, and found that being a cop was the best thing ever. All he had to do was move up in the ranks before he could actually be awesome, but for now, he got to enforce the law and take his anger out on people who deserved it--criminals.
When he was 26, he met a girl. She was a year younger and in law school and they were perfect for each other. Each was pessimistic, felt that all romance ended poorly, and lonely--they were in love immediately. Four years later, when they finally got married, they reasoned that it was going to work out because they were both so pessimistic and reasonable about it. This, however, was not correct.
Two years into their marriage, Addy turned eighteen and it was time for her to finally go off to college. Anderson had assumed she would do what he did--stay in the state to stay close to him. Being the youngest of two parents who felt guilty, however, gave Addy the opportunity to go as far away from home as possible. She chose UCLA for film and Anderson was devastated, especially when she told him she intended to stay for summers as well. He threw himself into work again. It was probably a sign that things were bad when he realized that the shooting range provided more comfort than his wife did, but he loved his wife and she was the only person left.
At 33, Anderson became the youngest head homicide detective in all of Florida. He got more hours, more responsibility, and, really, more awesomeness. His wife didn't think it was so awesome, though. She tried to reason that it was new and the workload would lessen, but that was not how Anderson rolled. He was a workaholic and a year later, it seemed like his work was multiplying, not lessening. Before suggesting a divorce, she suggested a separation. She intended to divorce him, but she didn't know quite yet if she wanted to.
Anderson held on to the fact that they were separated like a dog to a bone. He still had a wife--his wife hadn't legally left him yet. It didn't matter that, a few months later, he knew she had another boyfriend. She was still his wife. The only person, now, that he had to really spend time with was his partner. Unfortunately, his partner was not as obsessed with the job and murders as Anderson was and soon, he quit the force. This was the last straw for Anderson--who, after six Manhattans at the bar, decided it was time to win his wife back.
Instead of proving to his wife that he was manly, strong, and cared for her, when Anderson punched her boyfriend, she was just angry. The next day, after he got out of the holding cell with a warning, she brought divorce papers down to the station. There was no one there that Anderson was okay with knowing that his wife was divorcing him, so he hid in a closet to sign them and then mailed them over. More than ever, he threw himself into his work. He got a new partner, one he didn't like necessarily as much as his old partner, but one he did get to know and trust. And he's been at it for four years.| A P P E A R A N C E |
Anderson at work looks much the same as Anderson not at work. He wears suits, unless he has physical labor to do, and he always tries to look professional and upright. When alone, he often wears a robe--uncommon for general life, but something that Anderson takes very seriously. He is not afraid to spend money to get clothes that work best for him and, though he isn't particularly fashion savvy, he is people savvy and can tell when salespeople know what they're doing and telling him and when they just want to make a sale. Thus, he has a collection of fairly nice things that he wears--especially shoes. Shoes are important to Anderson because he's on his feet all the time. He wears comfortable shoes, mostly loafers and dress shoes with gel inserts. He is fond of suede and leather in his shoewear and does not have a pair of shoes that he wears out that was less than seventy bucks.
Since he was the youngest appointed detective, Anderson has gotten used to trying very hard to look the part. He is particular about his hair and always makes sure that it is perfectly coiffed and gelled. It is a dark brown, which he won't admit has some grey hairs in it, and he always keeps it short for practical reasons. He is always cleanshaven, always, because if he weren't, he'd be no different from the criminals he arrests every day. He wears cologne, but not too much. Just enough that, when he sweats at work from exertion, he still smells sort of manly and clean with his manly sweat smell.
Anderson does not waste movement. Sometimes having to perform crazy stunts while chasing suspects, Anderson has learned to conserve energy and not to exert himself when it isn't necessary. He walks with precision and never fidgets. Ever since he was a boy, he's had perfect posture and he would rather die than be caught slouching or looking sloppy. He runs every morning to keep himself toned and he goes to the gym at least three times a week. Exercising is as therapeutic for him as shooting is and this is obvious in the way his body looks. As he gets older, he exercises more--he refuses to let age catch up with his physique in the way some of the other, less important cops have.
| E X T R A S |
-He has a black Mustang GT convertible and he will shoot you if you touch it.
-Also, he is a republican--but not in a religious way. He's not religious at all.
-He is the youngest man to make head detective in the entire lower half of Florida.
-He takes pride in the amount of people who want him dead.| S K I L L S |
no.
| P L A Y E R |
Name no.
Age older than time.
Gender you tell me.
How you found us I live here.
Who else do you play? everyone. I play everyone.
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