![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Application for The Last Voyages
User Name/Nick: Juniper
User DW: N/A
AIM/IM: ricinbeens
E-mail: iamthejunipertree at gmail
Other Characters: Mickey Milkovich
Character Name: Omar Little
Series: The Wire
Age: 31 "or thereabout." In canon, Omar's records are extremely poorly kept, but this is the closest estimate.
From When?: His canonpoint is 4x07, "Unto Others," when Omar is attacked in prison. He'll be coming back with his Barge memories intact, though.
Inmate/Warden: Absolutely an inmate. He's a thief and murderer with a big ego and an even bigger lack of remorse. He's got a long redemption ahead, and even then, he'll never be due for wardenhood.
Abilities/Powers: No supernatural abilities. He has a lot of talents (especially in the realm of criminal and survival skills), but they're all human. He's something of a larger-than-life folk legend in canon; this is mostly because of his extremely high pain tolerance and almost psychotically high fear threshold.
Personality: As already mentioned above, Omar is kind of a legendary figure. He's Baltimore's answer to Robin Hood, robbing from the rich (drug dealers) and giving to the poor (anyone he likes more than drug dealers). He's so feared on the street that people will literally shout his name as a warning when they see or hear him coming. Even little kids fear his name, which proves how outsized his reputation is. Even though he would never put his gun on a "citizen," s he puts it, everyone is convinced he's the man to fear... or emulate, for some of them.
Part of what makes Omar so remarkable in the community is his wayward lifestyle. He almost always does as he pleases without fear or concern for what others think. If he wants to rob someone, he does. If he wants to walk down the street with a shotgun, he does. If he wants to sleep with men, he does -- he's openly gay and has never bothered hiding it, despite the abuse he and his boyfriends receive regularly. Very little can actually upset him, and he fears almost nothing, up to and including death. If he dies, he assumes he'll be murdered, and it will have been part of "the game," and therefore more or less fair.
"The game" is one of the most important things to Omar, superseded only by his own personal code. "The game" is how he refers to the drug trade that takes up huge swathes of Baltimore. All drug dealers, the people who support them (including lawyers and dirty cops), and people like Omar who profit off them are part of the game, and the game has its own rules. If someone dies as part of the game, it's within bounds, as long as they die cleanly. Conversely, when Omar's boyfriend Brandon is tortured to death, Omar isn't only angry about the death of his loved one; he's angry because torture isn't part of the game. He even claims that he seeks vengeance to the degree that he does because the rules were broken. This is another important point about Omar: he has his own code that he absolutely sticks to (the most notable item being that he'll never harm anyone who is "a citizen," i.e., not a fellow criminal), and he judges people who don't very harshly. It's also noteworthy that the rules of the game don't always intersect with the rules of Omar's code, but at those times, the code will override the game. For example, he claims that snitching isn't "how the game is played," but he does end up as an informant in revenge for Brandon.
When Omar does get angry, it's a cause for worry. His vengeance, like his code, is absolute. He will lie, cheat, murder, maim, steal, and generally cause every kind of mayhem imaginable until he gets what he wants. To avenge Brandon's death, he baldly commits perjury to get his killer put away for life by claiming to be witness to a completely different murder. In canon after his Barge entry point, he revenges himself on two dealers who manipulated him by stealing an entire shipment of drugs from them and then selling it back to them for millions of dollars. He's both shameless and extremely careful. He'll watch a victim for days and make a careful plan before he does anything, but once he does, there's no telling what he'll do.
So, obviously, it's not quite true that he doesn't care about anything. There are a few people he cares about very deeply, and he thinks of himself in a somewhat patriarchal role to them. He is their protector, and when he fails, he feels that guilt keenly. In recent years this has led him to begin to distance himself from people a little more. Although he was openly very affectionate with Brandon, his lover who was murdered, he's much cooler with his later partners. At the same time, this is also in part because they can't quite live up to Brandon in Omar's mind. Brandon made the ultimate sacrifice for him, was in a way the ultimate code-follower, and no one since has matched that level for Omar (and he in fact dumps his next boyfriend for cracking under torture, as Brandon didn't). He does still care about some people, though; it just takes time and work and a certain spark and fearlessness that most people don't have. He's friendly with many people, even some police, but has extremely few close friendships.
This is all below-surface stuff, though. Outwardly, Omar is a cool-looking guy with a big old scar on his face and a sawed-off, and that's the image he's happy to project to people. He genuinely enjoys his life and has no plans to quit, despite a few brief stabs at retirement. He's chatty, often witty, has a quick tongue and a good sense of humor, and an easygoing attitude that can actually put people at ease... when they don't know who he is. But he takes his Robin Hood role pretty seriously, too, and even in the neighborhoods where the kids fear him, he often tries to put a little back, at least to the people he likes.
Barge Reactions: Omar's easygoing nature made the Barge a less difficult transition for him than it is for some. He showed up in the middle of a port and adjusted pretty much right away by stealing everything in sight and stockpiling a secret cache of weapons under his floor, although this was later confiscated. He then promptly built a mini-crossbow out of melted toothbrushes and rubber bands. He spent a lot of his original Barge time in much same way he did in the real world: being genial and friendly with everyone, getting close to very few, cheerfully trolling all. He kept up his habit of staying random and trying not to stay in the same place for too long, even sleeping in different unoccupied rooms.
That said, there were a few significantly jarring events, all ones in which his own nature was turned against him in some way. For example, at the Overlook Hotel port, he was mind-controlled into hurting innocent people, which was very upsetting to him. During the gangster breach, he was partners and lovers with Ben, and when he returned to the Barge he found himself completely rattled by the depth of feeling his breach-self had for Ben. He'll be able to cope with his return to the Barge when he realizes that most of his friends are long gone, but there will definitely be at least a short mourning period.
Path to Redemption: Omar is never going to be an easy inmate to redeem, chiefly because he honestly feels no remorse for his lifestyle -- except for the way it's harmed the people around him, and this should probably be any warden's plan of attack. Although Omar has many bodies on him, the ones that weigh on his conscience the most are the ones he didn't actually kill himself but was still responsible for -- the accomplices who were killed for being allied with him. At the same time, he fully believes his accomplices are part of "the game" just as much as he is, and while he feels some guilt he also feels they knew their lives were at risk, so this is still not going to be an instant process. The other big thing he'll need to learn, which will be much harder, is a way to satisfy his wild impulses without resorting to mayhem and murder. He's lived his entire life as a criminal, so even if he's willing to change, it might be easier said than done.
History: Omar Devone Little was born in Baltimore in the early 1970s. His father was absent and his mother died when he was still young, leaving him and his brother Anthony to be raised by their extremely strict Christian grandmother, Josephine. Despite being under her wing, Anthony turned to a life of thievery, and Omar soon followed in his brother's footsteps. It was a dangerous life: even before the age of ten Omar was badly wounded in a knife fight, resulting in the characteristic scar across his face that he still carries in adulthood. However, some of Josephine's teachings had made an impact on him, and despite being a thief, he thought of himself as a thief with a code. In one notable episode from his life (in The Wire prequels), his brother and his brother's partner convinced him to help steal $16 from a man at the bus station. The young Omar, only 11 or 12, was so disgusted with this egregious crime (robbing from a man "on his way home from work") that he pulled a gun on Anthony's partner and refused to drop it until they agreed to give the money back.
Despite his chosen lifelong career, Omar had some interest in school, enjoying the lessons on Greek myths and legends as a child, and continuing through high school in a neighborhood where most of his peers had already dropped out. However, it's unclear as to whether he ever graduated. Meanwhile, Anthony and Omar had begun to part ways. Eventually, Anthony was caught in a jewelry heist and attempted suicide rather than jail. The attempt failed, earning him the derisive nickname "No-Heart" Anthony and eventually a long stretch in the pen. Omar, meanwhile, was also in and out of jail over the years, but unlike Anthony was hardened and developed by the experience. In fact, he thrived in at least one stint, picking up a "stable" of younger boyfriends (all consensual, or at least mutually beneficial). He switched career tracks, and at the age of 20 or so began to turn his thieving skills to drug dealers instead. His approach to life, taking it one day at a time, made it possible for him to live this way in an environment where few survive for long. He also developed a low-key but extremely helpful network of fellow criminals through his mentor, a blind ex-gangster named Butchie.
It took nine years for the other shoe to drop, but eventually, it did: after Omar robbed from the kingpin Avon Barksdale, Avon took a hit out on Omar's crew and doubled it when he found out Omar was gay. Omar's henchman Bailey was killed as a result, but more importantly (after all, Bailey was "part of the game"), Omar's lover Brandon was tortured, blinded, and then brutally murdered when he wouldn't give up Omar's whereabouts, and his desecrated body was left in public as a message to Omar. Despairing and looking for vengeance, Omar agreed to help the homicide detectives, McNulty and Greggs, who were investigating Barksdale. Omar claimed to have witnessed Bird, the Barksdale henchman he believed responsible for Brandon's death, murdering an innocent citizen, although he had seen no such thing. Meanwhile, the Omar-Barksdale war raged in the streets: Omar killed a second Barksdale soldier and badly wounded another, and in turn was shot in the shoulder. After bribing another kingpin, Proposition Joe, he got a shot at Barksdale himself, but missed his opportunity. After that shootout, Barksdale's partner Stringer Bell offered Omar a "truce." Sensing it was a trap, though, Omar retreated to New York City.
When it came time to testify, he returned to Baltimore with a new boyfriend Dante in tow, shamelessly perjuring himself on the stand to get Bird put away for life. That taken care of, he resumed his feud with Barksdale, robbing stash after stash with Dante and their female accomplices Tosha and Kimmy. Stringer Bell again intervened, offering another truce and telling Omar that a man named Brother Mouzone was the one who had tortured Brandon. In reality, Mouzone was a hired gun of Avon's that Stringer was looking to get rid of. Omar confronted Mouzone and wounded him, but realizing he wasn't the right man, let him live and returned his attentions to Barksdale and Stringer. However, after Tosha was killed in a shootout, he started to feel extremely guilty -- even wounding himself almost ritualistically as a price for her death -- and contemplated giving up the war. He also helped one of the detectives on her case, Bunk Moreland, as a way of easing his mind.
He gave up the idea of retirement again when some of Stringer's men attacked him and his grandmother on their way to church, breaking the longstanding "Sunday code." Around this time, Mouzone returned and kidnapped Dante, torturing him for Omar's location. Unlike Brandon, Dante gave in. However, when Mouzone found Omar, he offered an alliance: put aside their differences for a crack at killing Stringer Bell. Omar took the offer and the two shot Stringer down together. Soon after, Omar ditched Dante for giving him up, and took up with a new boyfriend Renaldo.
With Stringer dead (and Barksdale imprisoned soon after), the work of robbery became irritatingly easy, and Omar began to grow restless. He opted for a new target: rising kingpin Marlo Stanfield. In revenge for his thefts, Marlo had Omar framed for the murder of an innocent woman (despite Omar's insistence that he had never hurt an innocent) and sent to prison, then promptly took out a five-figure contract on his head. Although Omar had some protection through Butchie's contacts, it wasn't enough, and he was attacked the very first day. In canon, he survives the attempt, but for Barge purposes he believes he was killed.
Sample Journal Entry:
Omar trolls the Barge but good.
Sample RP:
Omar holds up The Code.
User DW: N/A
AIM/IM: ricinbeens
E-mail: iamthejunipertree at gmail
Other Characters: Mickey Milkovich
Character Name: Omar Little
Series: The Wire
Age: 31 "or thereabout." In canon, Omar's records are extremely poorly kept, but this is the closest estimate.
From When?: His canonpoint is 4x07, "Unto Others," when Omar is attacked in prison. He'll be coming back with his Barge memories intact, though.
Inmate/Warden: Absolutely an inmate. He's a thief and murderer with a big ego and an even bigger lack of remorse. He's got a long redemption ahead, and even then, he'll never be due for wardenhood.
Abilities/Powers: No supernatural abilities. He has a lot of talents (especially in the realm of criminal and survival skills), but they're all human. He's something of a larger-than-life folk legend in canon; this is mostly because of his extremely high pain tolerance and almost psychotically high fear threshold.
Personality: As already mentioned above, Omar is kind of a legendary figure. He's Baltimore's answer to Robin Hood, robbing from the rich (drug dealers) and giving to the poor (anyone he likes more than drug dealers). He's so feared on the street that people will literally shout his name as a warning when they see or hear him coming. Even little kids fear his name, which proves how outsized his reputation is. Even though he would never put his gun on a "citizen," s he puts it, everyone is convinced he's the man to fear... or emulate, for some of them.
Part of what makes Omar so remarkable in the community is his wayward lifestyle. He almost always does as he pleases without fear or concern for what others think. If he wants to rob someone, he does. If he wants to walk down the street with a shotgun, he does. If he wants to sleep with men, he does -- he's openly gay and has never bothered hiding it, despite the abuse he and his boyfriends receive regularly. Very little can actually upset him, and he fears almost nothing, up to and including death. If he dies, he assumes he'll be murdered, and it will have been part of "the game," and therefore more or less fair.
"The game" is one of the most important things to Omar, superseded only by his own personal code. "The game" is how he refers to the drug trade that takes up huge swathes of Baltimore. All drug dealers, the people who support them (including lawyers and dirty cops), and people like Omar who profit off them are part of the game, and the game has its own rules. If someone dies as part of the game, it's within bounds, as long as they die cleanly. Conversely, when Omar's boyfriend Brandon is tortured to death, Omar isn't only angry about the death of his loved one; he's angry because torture isn't part of the game. He even claims that he seeks vengeance to the degree that he does because the rules were broken. This is another important point about Omar: he has his own code that he absolutely sticks to (the most notable item being that he'll never harm anyone who is "a citizen," i.e., not a fellow criminal), and he judges people who don't very harshly. It's also noteworthy that the rules of the game don't always intersect with the rules of Omar's code, but at those times, the code will override the game. For example, he claims that snitching isn't "how the game is played," but he does end up as an informant in revenge for Brandon.
When Omar does get angry, it's a cause for worry. His vengeance, like his code, is absolute. He will lie, cheat, murder, maim, steal, and generally cause every kind of mayhem imaginable until he gets what he wants. To avenge Brandon's death, he baldly commits perjury to get his killer put away for life by claiming to be witness to a completely different murder. In canon after his Barge entry point, he revenges himself on two dealers who manipulated him by stealing an entire shipment of drugs from them and then selling it back to them for millions of dollars. He's both shameless and extremely careful. He'll watch a victim for days and make a careful plan before he does anything, but once he does, there's no telling what he'll do.
So, obviously, it's not quite true that he doesn't care about anything. There are a few people he cares about very deeply, and he thinks of himself in a somewhat patriarchal role to them. He is their protector, and when he fails, he feels that guilt keenly. In recent years this has led him to begin to distance himself from people a little more. Although he was openly very affectionate with Brandon, his lover who was murdered, he's much cooler with his later partners. At the same time, this is also in part because they can't quite live up to Brandon in Omar's mind. Brandon made the ultimate sacrifice for him, was in a way the ultimate code-follower, and no one since has matched that level for Omar (and he in fact dumps his next boyfriend for cracking under torture, as Brandon didn't). He does still care about some people, though; it just takes time and work and a certain spark and fearlessness that most people don't have. He's friendly with many people, even some police, but has extremely few close friendships.
This is all below-surface stuff, though. Outwardly, Omar is a cool-looking guy with a big old scar on his face and a sawed-off, and that's the image he's happy to project to people. He genuinely enjoys his life and has no plans to quit, despite a few brief stabs at retirement. He's chatty, often witty, has a quick tongue and a good sense of humor, and an easygoing attitude that can actually put people at ease... when they don't know who he is. But he takes his Robin Hood role pretty seriously, too, and even in the neighborhoods where the kids fear him, he often tries to put a little back, at least to the people he likes.
Barge Reactions: Omar's easygoing nature made the Barge a less difficult transition for him than it is for some. He showed up in the middle of a port and adjusted pretty much right away by stealing everything in sight and stockpiling a secret cache of weapons under his floor, although this was later confiscated. He then promptly built a mini-crossbow out of melted toothbrushes and rubber bands. He spent a lot of his original Barge time in much same way he did in the real world: being genial and friendly with everyone, getting close to very few, cheerfully trolling all. He kept up his habit of staying random and trying not to stay in the same place for too long, even sleeping in different unoccupied rooms.
That said, there were a few significantly jarring events, all ones in which his own nature was turned against him in some way. For example, at the Overlook Hotel port, he was mind-controlled into hurting innocent people, which was very upsetting to him. During the gangster breach, he was partners and lovers with Ben, and when he returned to the Barge he found himself completely rattled by the depth of feeling his breach-self had for Ben. He'll be able to cope with his return to the Barge when he realizes that most of his friends are long gone, but there will definitely be at least a short mourning period.
Path to Redemption: Omar is never going to be an easy inmate to redeem, chiefly because he honestly feels no remorse for his lifestyle -- except for the way it's harmed the people around him, and this should probably be any warden's plan of attack. Although Omar has many bodies on him, the ones that weigh on his conscience the most are the ones he didn't actually kill himself but was still responsible for -- the accomplices who were killed for being allied with him. At the same time, he fully believes his accomplices are part of "the game" just as much as he is, and while he feels some guilt he also feels they knew their lives were at risk, so this is still not going to be an instant process. The other big thing he'll need to learn, which will be much harder, is a way to satisfy his wild impulses without resorting to mayhem and murder. He's lived his entire life as a criminal, so even if he's willing to change, it might be easier said than done.
History: Omar Devone Little was born in Baltimore in the early 1970s. His father was absent and his mother died when he was still young, leaving him and his brother Anthony to be raised by their extremely strict Christian grandmother, Josephine. Despite being under her wing, Anthony turned to a life of thievery, and Omar soon followed in his brother's footsteps. It was a dangerous life: even before the age of ten Omar was badly wounded in a knife fight, resulting in the characteristic scar across his face that he still carries in adulthood. However, some of Josephine's teachings had made an impact on him, and despite being a thief, he thought of himself as a thief with a code. In one notable episode from his life (in The Wire prequels), his brother and his brother's partner convinced him to help steal $16 from a man at the bus station. The young Omar, only 11 or 12, was so disgusted with this egregious crime (robbing from a man "on his way home from work") that he pulled a gun on Anthony's partner and refused to drop it until they agreed to give the money back.
Despite his chosen lifelong career, Omar had some interest in school, enjoying the lessons on Greek myths and legends as a child, and continuing through high school in a neighborhood where most of his peers had already dropped out. However, it's unclear as to whether he ever graduated. Meanwhile, Anthony and Omar had begun to part ways. Eventually, Anthony was caught in a jewelry heist and attempted suicide rather than jail. The attempt failed, earning him the derisive nickname "No-Heart" Anthony and eventually a long stretch in the pen. Omar, meanwhile, was also in and out of jail over the years, but unlike Anthony was hardened and developed by the experience. In fact, he thrived in at least one stint, picking up a "stable" of younger boyfriends (all consensual, or at least mutually beneficial). He switched career tracks, and at the age of 20 or so began to turn his thieving skills to drug dealers instead. His approach to life, taking it one day at a time, made it possible for him to live this way in an environment where few survive for long. He also developed a low-key but extremely helpful network of fellow criminals through his mentor, a blind ex-gangster named Butchie.
It took nine years for the other shoe to drop, but eventually, it did: after Omar robbed from the kingpin Avon Barksdale, Avon took a hit out on Omar's crew and doubled it when he found out Omar was gay. Omar's henchman Bailey was killed as a result, but more importantly (after all, Bailey was "part of the game"), Omar's lover Brandon was tortured, blinded, and then brutally murdered when he wouldn't give up Omar's whereabouts, and his desecrated body was left in public as a message to Omar. Despairing and looking for vengeance, Omar agreed to help the homicide detectives, McNulty and Greggs, who were investigating Barksdale. Omar claimed to have witnessed Bird, the Barksdale henchman he believed responsible for Brandon's death, murdering an innocent citizen, although he had seen no such thing. Meanwhile, the Omar-Barksdale war raged in the streets: Omar killed a second Barksdale soldier and badly wounded another, and in turn was shot in the shoulder. After bribing another kingpin, Proposition Joe, he got a shot at Barksdale himself, but missed his opportunity. After that shootout, Barksdale's partner Stringer Bell offered Omar a "truce." Sensing it was a trap, though, Omar retreated to New York City.
When it came time to testify, he returned to Baltimore with a new boyfriend Dante in tow, shamelessly perjuring himself on the stand to get Bird put away for life. That taken care of, he resumed his feud with Barksdale, robbing stash after stash with Dante and their female accomplices Tosha and Kimmy. Stringer Bell again intervened, offering another truce and telling Omar that a man named Brother Mouzone was the one who had tortured Brandon. In reality, Mouzone was a hired gun of Avon's that Stringer was looking to get rid of. Omar confronted Mouzone and wounded him, but realizing he wasn't the right man, let him live and returned his attentions to Barksdale and Stringer. However, after Tosha was killed in a shootout, he started to feel extremely guilty -- even wounding himself almost ritualistically as a price for her death -- and contemplated giving up the war. He also helped one of the detectives on her case, Bunk Moreland, as a way of easing his mind.
He gave up the idea of retirement again when some of Stringer's men attacked him and his grandmother on their way to church, breaking the longstanding "Sunday code." Around this time, Mouzone returned and kidnapped Dante, torturing him for Omar's location. Unlike Brandon, Dante gave in. However, when Mouzone found Omar, he offered an alliance: put aside their differences for a crack at killing Stringer Bell. Omar took the offer and the two shot Stringer down together. Soon after, Omar ditched Dante for giving him up, and took up with a new boyfriend Renaldo.
With Stringer dead (and Barksdale imprisoned soon after), the work of robbery became irritatingly easy, and Omar began to grow restless. He opted for a new target: rising kingpin Marlo Stanfield. In revenge for his thefts, Marlo had Omar framed for the murder of an innocent woman (despite Omar's insistence that he had never hurt an innocent) and sent to prison, then promptly took out a five-figure contract on his head. Although Omar had some protection through Butchie's contacts, it wasn't enough, and he was attacked the very first day. In canon, he survives the attempt, but for Barge purposes he believes he was killed.
Sample Journal Entry:
Omar trolls the Barge but good.
Sample RP:
Omar holds up The Code.