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 Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 6:32 am
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Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 6:33 am
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Name: Quinn Rowell
Nicknames: It's not very personal, but people who don't know him call him by the initials or gamertag he leaves in arcades.
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Fav. Food: He loves his mom's homemade-from-scratch chicken noodle soup like nothing else.
Hated Food: 95% of frozen dinners; he's used to delicious home cooking, so it's really just not the same.
Gift: WakaWakaWaka (video games) Quinn's mother was a front desk clerk at a small vacation hotel during the summer months when he was younger. Unable to afford babysitting for the long hours every day, she simply brought him to work with her and let him wander around the grounds. As most children would, he followed the bright lights and electronic noises to the arcade; when his mother found him, it took her over an hour to pry him away from the hotel's Pac-Man machine.
His intrigue of video games only snowballed since then - it's all he does in his free time. He breaks every game down into its simplest parts, and is usually able to play most anything no matter the learning curve.
He does not, however, enjoy playing MMOs or online co-op; the other "players" are unpredictable variables, and he gets far too frustrated when dealing with such trivial things that could so easily destroy the predicted outcome.
(More practically, it carries over into his "IRL WORLD!1" by fine-tuning his tactical understanding and by keeping him on his toes. Never know when a zombie's gonna be jumping on you to chew your face off, after all.)
Virtues:
Sniper, third floor! Even before he fell in love with video games, Quinn loved I Spy on car trips. He has a keen eye and is always very observant of his surroundings, to the point where he gets a little anxious when he's not sure what's around that next corner.
I have the Triforce of Courage, baby. Is that a dark tidal pool? THAT'S OKAY. He likes to think that he isn't afraid of anything - okay, death is kind of bad, but that's what started all of this. He's had to be strong for his mother since his father's death, which meant he couldn't be afraid of bugs, rodents, or answering the phone (it was a legit fear for her!).
Bedtime means bedtime. He is undeniably caught up in his gamer-life, but his respect for his mom (and any other adult/leader figure) comes first. If he's told to stop playing, he has no issues signing off, and that's that. The only time he snapped back at his mom he felt guilty for weeks, and it hasn't happened again.
Flaws:
Oh s**t, that won't respawn? Being so caught up in the video game world bleeds over to his reality. He uses the lingo and occasionally attempts keyboard shortcuts that are obviously not going to work. The fact that Ctrl + Z doesn't work IRL is extremely devastating to him. This wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't make him a complete social failure. Nobody wants to communicate with someone they can't understand.
Psst, the answer to 35 is C. Because he is so aware of what is happening around him, he tends to get nosey. Not on purpose - he just wants to be helpful, but he has trouble respecting personal space. He often interjects in conversations where he isn't really welcome, and never understands why people seem so offended by this.
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:44 am
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:10 am
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Well, that was the last of it.
Quinn scrubbed his hands on his pants to remove the remnants of soda-sticky, looking at his handiwork with pride. A barrier of Mountain Dew cans sat between him and the poor little plant that had been delivered to his room. Though he couldn't shake the feeling that it had a striking resemblance to the piranha plants from Super Mario, he'd called his mother to ask for plant advice anyway.
Her instructions had been very clear on keeping the soil moist - with water, of course, but Quinn had so many cans of half-finished Mountain Dew lying around. Surely if it were his plant, he could give it Mountain Dew and the thing would adore it.
Lovingly, he picked up a bright pink post-it from his desk, scribbled "Mr. Piranha Plant" on it, and stuck it against the pot. As an afterthought, he leaned down to add "Warning: This Is Not A Pipe" beneath the name. Pleased that he'd done all he possibly could, he embarked on his search for his PSP. Something had to fill the void his DS left.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:33 pm
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ded (crosspost):
Weary, homesick, and more than a little weirded out, Quinn abandoned his video games in favor of daydreaming about home, a smile playing across his lips. Aside from gaming, he found that there really was no better way to wind down than locking himself inside a cozy-warm room, chair leaned back on two legs, thinking of the exponentially better-than-this happy times that would be coming as soon as he made it through the semester. And he was going to make it through the semester, even if it killed him.
He thought of how nice it would be to see his mother at Christmas. He thought of all of their traditions - hot chocolate while watching the television specials on Christmas Eve, decorating the tree, hanging their stockings (and one extra for his father, even after all this time). Most importantly, he thought of fresh gingerbread, and how his mother would start baking gingerbread men and gingerbread houses and all sorts of other delicious things immediately upon his return.
He propped his elbows up on his desk and put his head in his hands with a dreamy sigh, eyelids falling closed with a mixture of contentment and exhaustion. Mm, gingerbread. The little cookies were so delicious that he could almost taste them, could almost smell them cooking. Smell them burning.
...burning?
Confused, Quinn sat up in his chair, which in turn meant that he immediately fell backwards due to his failure to sit properly. He scrambled to get upright again, crawling on his hands and knees towards the door. There was a good chance that some of the stoner kids had just lit up a little too close to one of the vents, but this smelled different. This smelled like the warm fireplace he wished he was sitting in front of with his mother, but there wasn't any feeling of Christmas cheer. He just felt afraid. Worried, he peeked through the small crack beneath the door, grumbling with frustration when he saw nothing but a faint strip of light. He knew he should have smashed in part of the door to create a hatch in case of zombie emergencies. Or fire emergencies, in this case.
Neglecting any ounce of training he'd been through in elementary school, he reached for the door handle, assuming that Pressing A just turning it would get him out of this mess, or at the least enlighten him as to what was going on here. Instead, the handle was hot to the touch - so hot that he could have sworn he heard his hand sizzle as it cooked his flesh.
"Not good, not good," he mumbled, staring down at his reddening hand. Stating the obvious was definitely going to fix this situation. And really, elementary school fire-training hadn't taught him what to do past testing the doors, so he was feeling a little stuck here.
Normally, this would be when he'd change weapons to his automatic shotgun and fire rounds into the door until it splintered, then double back to avoid the flashburn. After that, he'd just run through the fire as long as his HP would handle it.
And his HP could always handle it.
It could have been the adrenaline, the panic of defeat, or the overwhelming desire to get the ******** out of this crazy place once and for all. It could have been the memory of gingerbread and his mother's hugs on Christmas Eve. Whatever the case, he doused himself with handfuls of water from the sink, careful to appropriately soak his hair. He'd never been a particularly vain person, but he knew what fired hair smelled (and looked) like, so he was going to avoid that if at all possible.
There weren't many things to gather up - he'd brought a bare minimum of belongings to Barren Pines, which was apparently proving to be a tiny blessing. The wallet-sized picture of him with his mother was nestled in his coat pocket as he made his way towards the door; the creepy plant he'd been given that Was Not A Pipe was snatched up as an afterthought.
Great images formed in his head of him emerging from the flames, Mr. Piranha Plant tucked safely under his arms, the both of them generally unharmed, save a few singed edges. Hell, the image of a fried Mr. Piranha Plant and a generally unharmed Quinn was pretty fantastic too, if he had to make the sacrifice. He imagined how his classmates would all be there - Serenade, preferably still as lovely as ever, Piper with the headcrab, Andeon being...weird and unhelpful towards monster-defeat, and Sue, who seemed like a good friend. Or a comrade in this mess, at least. And everyone would be so happy that he'd lived, and he could go home, and there would be fresh gingerbread - not burned - waiting for him.
With these thoughts distracting him, he slammed into his door, effectively jarring it enough to make it through. His escape from his room didn't really matter. His HP simply wasn't high enough. The flames met him with a menacing heat that was way worse than the time he thought he'd play with fireworks to reenact the Fire Temple. He didn't have a Goron Tunic and the fire hurt. Mr. Piranha Plant was already beginning to smolder, and he could smell his hair burning despite his best efforts to avoid it. Every cough and cry sucked in more hot air and smoke, making it unbearable to even breathe.
Quinn dropped the plant, the shattering of the terracotta pot barely audible through the crackling of the violent flames. He fell to his knees beside it, then curled up on his side, hands clutching the picture of his mother. God, he wanted to see her again so badly. He had to see her again.
He couldn't leave her all alone. Not after he'd promised to take care of her forever, because his father wouldn't be able to. Not after she'd told him so many times how he was everything to her. Though he willed his body as hard as he could to move, to just get out of here to get back home to her, he wouldn't budge. Every inch of him was admitting defeat, and there were no potions or extra lives or phoenix downs or fairies to help him.
"Quinn?" The voice was speaking to him over the noise of the fire. He tried to open his eyes to see who it might be, but found that his eyelids had apparently sealed themselves together. Pleasant. Everything hurt, but he managed to croak out a response. Or at least something that sounded like a response. Or maybe he didn't manage at all - but the words were in his head, at the very least, because telepathy just had to work.
"...wha?"
"You don't have to hang on any longer." Oh god, it was still talking to him. Things like this were never good. He thought he could feel his lungs collapsing or burning up or whatever. He was pretty sure he didn't have feet anymore, registering that he couldn't move his toes or feel anything other than excruciating-
wait. Could the voice...
"Mother...is that...?" Maybe she had come to rescue him! Rescue him and bring him hugs and gingerbread cookies because everything was going to be okay! If his heart were not feeling as if it were caving in on itself, it probably would have leapt out of his chest. And promptly fried.
"Again? Why is everyone calling me their mother lately?" If disembodied voices could sound miffed, this one was doing it. It sighed, but continued on. "Everyone's waiting, if you're ready."
"Mmm..." Everyone. His 'friends', if he could call them that. His mom. Would his dad be there, too? Maybe even the girl he'd met online and spoken to for hours and hours about Resident Evil? The voice had said everyone...
He exhaled a long, rattling, fluid-filled breath, not unlike the noise a Boomer might make. His fingers twitched across the face of his mother behind the glass of the tiny picture frame. He stopped hurting.
He went home.
GAME OVER. RESET? Y/N
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