STATEMENT OF INTENT

[tagjamming]

Player Information

Name: Gira
Personal Journal: murkrows
Age: Sixteen
Contact Info: breloomasaurus@gmail.com, startropics @ plurk
Other Characters Played: John Egbert (OU) and Equius Zahhak (AU)
Do you need an invite? No

Character Information

Character Name: We don't know his real name; like the rest of the GGs, he goes only by a tag moniker, which in this case is "Beat".
Character Series: Jet Set Radio (Future)
Character Age: Seventeen to nineteen
Character Gender: Male
Original Canon
Canon Point: End of the game.
Background Link: Heah
Personality: So, Jet Set Radio is pretty special in that the two games of the series seem to have their own little continuities for each one; that is, each is a canon AU of the other. Beat here is mostly grounded in the second game, Jet Set Radio Future, but we'll probably be using a few examples from the original to supplement his personality.

So, Beat. He's essentially the series mascot, and appears on the covers of both games. He's basically the designated main character of the first game, and a major one in the second. In both, he's pretty comfortably balanced, as much as the first playable character in Future -- therefore extending that he's one of the most talented people around. In our little version of the canon, Beat was the one who did most of the plot-important missions and Saved The World; normally, you can choose a different skater for each level. So it would be easy to say that the events have gone to his head. But really, that would be an overstatement. He's just got an ego, plain and simple.

Even before he did any real talking in the game, it was easy to get at least a suggestion of Beat's personality through his body language. He tends to swagger when he walks (and even in the dancing animation when he's standing idle), and has a very showy set of tricks compared to most other characters. Besides that, the first Jet Set Radio came from a time before characters could really change expressions -- and Beat's face is set in a cocky-looking smirk.

Furthermore, when we are farther into the (first) game and he's assessing some plot-relevant newbies to join the GGs, he challenges one of them to a race to 'prove themselves' against him, with what is very clearly a taunt at his skill; "Think you can get to the tagging area before me?" And after he loses, he outright states that the two of them didn't actually suck like he thought they did. He does the same thing in JSR Future, mind, when he's first joining the GGs. He challenges one of the GGs to a race. If he wins, they all have to answer to him; if they win, "well, we'll figure it out when we get there." He couldn't even spare the thirty seconds to reverse the situation, because obviously he was going to win, right? (In the end, he lost, and decided to join the GGs for lack of anything better to do.)

Beat is what the game's narrator of sorts, DJ Professor K, calls a 'rudie' -- a youth who runs around a futuristic Tokyo City, spraying graffiti on rollerskates in an expression of art and independence. They're all fighting against each other in gangs, but they all share a common enemy in the Rokkaku Group, a corporation whose leader seems dedicated to taking over the world through corrupt politics. He's already gotten his hands on the police force, hence their practically official name of the Rokkaku Police. They've taken a particular interest in the rudies, seeing them as threats to the Rokkaku dream for the city (which is a land completely without free speech and expression), so of course the kids fight back in full force. Oftentimes it seems like the police go way too far in dealing with these teenagers; they literally bring in SWAT units, helicopters, and even tanks to go after a couple of kids on rollerblades. Instead of, you know, giving their soldiers rollerblades.

Even among rudies, Beat is notorious for his thirst for indepencence and making a name for himself; he even ran away from home when he was younger to set off on this bizarre Tokyo street expedition, viewing his conservative parents as intolerable for the person he wanted to be. All things considered, he's done pretty well, but he still keeps with his dream of freedom; you try to cage this bird, he's gonna chomp your hand off. Case in point, pretty much every interaction with the Rokkaku Police; people go after him, he will sneak up behind and spray graffiti on their backs. He tries to skate through a pedestrian area and someone else is in the way, well, sorry about that; hope they're fast!

Furthermore, he has no qualms with disobeying authority if he doesn't feel they should be obeyed. His word on whether they should be obeyed or not is very finicky, though, and he doesn't stick around for anything once he's decides that they're not worth his time. Again, we reference his running away when he was younger; interesting fact, he never actually got any organized schooling past maybe the eighth grade, so intellectually he's considered pretty stupid, and this just adds to his laundry list of undesirable traits. Another one of them is cockiness beyond belief; he's got so much faith in himself and his talents that he usually throws caution to the wind and hops right in there, counting on a plan to MacGuyver itself later.

Beat's a shady-looking fellow and he knows it, so he gleefully accepts all of the rumors that float around about him. For this reason, he has a collection of urban myths following him around, including one that he was responsible for stealing a culturally-important statue taller than he is from Dogenzaka Hill. (The reality of the situation was that it was a sabotage attempt by Rokkaku, who built a mechanical lookalike of him to cause trouble on the streets and make the rudies look bad.) And according to DJ Professor K, Beat also likes to play 'dress-up' -- that is, dress in bizarre neon clothes that make people notice him. It seems like anything that gets him extra attention is A-OK in his book.

Despite all of these negative traits, though, he's not stupid or inherently 'bad'. In actuality, Beat is fairly philosophical; he tries to put messages into the 'serious' works he puts on the walls. What, you thought it was just tagging everything everywhere to put the GGs' name all over the place? ...Well, okay, it's partially that. But he also engages in more driven pieces, serious commentaries on the status of life and art -- even if it is expressed in a medium that most people may not be able to understand. Unfortunately, this is the only way he can channel the thoughts. He's spectacularly ineloquent, so he often clams up about his deeper ideas, prefering not to say anything if he can't present it in a way that satisfies him (i.e., his artwork). If other people think his head is filled of nothing but pictures of himself, then more power to them...

...or, at least, that's what he'd like to say. Maybe, somewhere in the most selfish corner of his heart, he wishes he could connect with people better on a plane that doesn't involve exaggeration and visual metaphor. But he knows that his body and personality is just a vessel; it doesn't matter how people view him. It only matters how people view what he does. After all, he'll only live for what, fifty years? Less, considering his walk of life? Not very long. But he just wants to preserve his ideas, even if they're explained in the only way he knows how; as long as someone in the future can see them and use them to build a better world, then he would be happy.
Abilities: Beat is in top physical condition, and is able to make jumps and take falls that 'normal' humans would have trouble with. This last bit may have something to do with his specialized magnetic rollerblades, and also the fact that he is a character in a Japanese platforming game made by Sega.

Furthermore, Beat is one of the few people who can see 'the soul of the streets'; in the game, it manifests itself in the form of nondescript spray-paint cans in the three primary colors. Red heals him, blue and yellow just go into his inventory; from there, Beat can spray these just about anywhere, and design complex tags from sweeping once across the wall. Apparently, these spraycans rely on the holder's creativity to make designs; there isn't a specific color of paint for green, red, or purple, since all he has to do is imagine the design in his mind and the spraypaint will change accordingly to reflect it.

Also, he can dance like a boss.
Sample Entry: There were some people in the Hellspawn Brigade who had other places to go during the night. It was some other corner of the town they’d secured for themselves to sleep in, in relative safety and comfort. Some people even had actual houses with which to spend the night, though never their own. Beat wasn’t one of those people. In fact, he pretty much looked down upon those people; sorry, guys, but you can’t have a skate in both worlds. You were in or you were out. There was no returning to your old haunts every night out of nostalgia for what once had been. But, then again, it wasn’t all bad – the more people who weren’t here, the less members who would be put out of commission if anyone tried to get the jump on them. And the more room for people who did stick around the full twenty-four hours.

Everyone here had a sleeping bag – they were expected to supply it themselves. You keep your shit in the sleeping bag, and nobody takes it; if you don’t, it’s fair game. That’s the way it works. No one here really had a lot of personal possessions anyway, besides their skates – Beat kept only headphones and bug-eyed glasses, for example – and the biggest problem anyone really faced was Combo and his bigass stereo system. But, then again, he can leave it anywhere; no one really looks forward to messing with Combo.

“Pizza’s in,” Beat announced as he kicked the door open, balancing no less than four boxes in his arms. Being a veteran to the ways of GG food consumption, he set it on the nearest table and stood back. Conveniently, there was a shack in the middle of the place where everyone tended to crash when the weather wasn’t the greatest, as it was today. So everyone who wasn’t out being reckless was hanging out around here – and at this hour, that was a sizable portion. So if whoever didn’t bring the pizza couldn’t get themselves out of the way in time, they’d be mixed in with the rest of the stains on the carpet by the time everyone else got a piece.

But just like everywhere else in life, if you didn’t stake your claim immediately, you’d miss out; so he jumped right back in and made off with three pieces before everyone else could finish arguing over the pepperoni. Beat was something like a garbage disposal; he’d eat anything. So he always made sure to get at least a corner of a pie with some really undesirable topping, the hope being that no one else would go near it and he would have a free meal.

It worked, and Beat no less than threw himself upon the beat-up couch that had pretty much been staked as his; being one of the earliest members to join, he had gotten one of the best seats in the house when it came to sleep, so while everyone else had to stay on the floor he had the entire thing to himself. It wasn’t exactly a luxury mattress, but by this point, he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to sleep on a mattress anyway. He was sitting sideways on the piece of furniture, but even though he wasn’t tall enough to touch the other end, he still had to curl his feet in; Yoyo had just made a beeline for the couch as well, and he didn’t seem terribly concerned with the fact that Beat’s legs were right there.

“Whoa there, bucko,” he said, shooting the other GG one of his trademark demented smiles. “Got the cops after you or somethin’?”