app for lastvoyages round two

[inhistorybooks]

User Name/Nick: Gwen!
User DW: betterdeadthanred
AIM/IM: girlwonder004 @ AIM
E-mail: isthereair@gmail.com
Other Characters: Charles Xavier, David 8, Vesper Lynd, Peter Parker

Character Name: Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Series: Star Trek: Enterprise
Age: 33
From When?: After 4x02: Storm Front Part II

Inmate/Warden: Warden! Trip is kind of a boy scout and always tries SUPER HARD to do the right thing, even if it's against protocol/direct orders/Trip omg how have you not been fired.
Item: A Frankenstein action figure.

Abilities/Powers: Trip is a boring human, and as such doesn't have any supernatural powers or anything fun like that. He is, however, an incredibly talented engineer, and has been the Chief Engineer on the first Earth ship with Warp Five capable engines. As a trained Starfleet officer, he’s been prepared for a number of dangerous survival situations, knows his way around a phase pistol, has some pretty useful self defense training under his belt and isn’t a bad pilot either.

Personality: Trip is a pretty open guy. He’s not at all shy about letting people know exactly how he feels on a particular topic, and is guided by his emotions and morality more than logic or rational thinking, which makes him basically the perfect counterpart to Archer’s intuition and T’Pol’s logic. He doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to basically anything and wears his heart on his sleeve. Needless to say, he isn’t exactly good at being subtle and he’s not really a good liar. He knows what he likes and what he doesn’t, and while he can definitely be talked into looking at something in a different way, there’s occasionally some feet dragging and general reluctance and potential whining. He has a strong sense of right and wrong, and a moral code that he sticks to no matter what the circumstances, even when others are willing to make compromises of their own ethics.

And while all of these are not necessarily negative traits, they aren’t always the most useful when it comes to actually doing his job. Trip never really learned to be tactful, and this has landed him into a number of difficult situations over the years, especially when he gets angry or frustrated. He usually talks and acts without thinking about the consequences, and generally imposes his own moral values onto situations where they don’t actually apply because of cultural differences and misunderstandings. This has tapered off slightly as he’s gotten older and wiser, but is still a big part of how he functions as an officer in Starfleet. So, while Trip is undoubtedly good at his job, and didn’t just have it handed to him for one reason or another, there’s really no question that one of the only reasons he’s kept it is because of his friendship with Archer. Under a different captain, it is incredibly likely that he would have been reassigned on any number of occasions whether for fumbling the ball on diplomatic missions.

That being said, Trip’s a good guy, and legitimately a real down home Southern gentleman. As such, he’s polite when first introduced to people – generally, assuming the circumstances of the introduction go well and sometimes they do – and is able to maintain this politeness if it’s reciprocated. He likes meeting new people and experiencing new things, and so is always one of the firsts to volunteer for an away mission (whether or not it actually makes sense for a chief engineer to be there, which it often doesn't) or a test run of new equipment. (The major exception being desert environments, which he’s developed a healthy abhorrence for.) He gets particularly excited when finding out new information about other civilization’s technology, and if he actually gets the chance to check it out for himself, his excitement matches the levels of a kid at Christmas.

He’s friendly and generally well liked by his staff and the rest of the crew, going out of his way to get to know people on the ship and make it clear that he’s not just a senior officer. He’s pretty informal with the crew and his fellow senior staff members, insisting that people call him Trip rather than Commander Tucker, and even helped organize weekly movie nights to boost crew morale. In fact, Trip usually knows just what to do to cheer his friends up when in a bad mood, and isn’t one to just give up and let someone sulk unless they really make it clear that they’d prefer to be left alone. Even though he can have a temper, Trip is a very compassionate person, and even when frustrated with another person or culture, he will do his very best to make sure things work out in the end for them.

While he can be stubborn, he knows how to follow orders, even if on occasion he might complain about them or try and convince someone – namely Archer – to let him get out of something unpleasant. Still, he’s incredibly loyal to both Jonathan and the mission, and is more than willing to go above and beyond the call of duty in the name of either. In general, he’s a very loyal friend and colleague, and would happily put his life on the line for the benefit of a friend or coworker. He doesn’t scare easily and in that sense is a typical brave Starfleet officer, who’s willing to die in the line of duty if need be. He doesn’t back down from a fight, and no matter how horrible a situation is, he tries to keep hope that everything will work out okay in the end. He takes failure fairly hard and blames himself for screw ups, especially if there was loss of life involved, and although he certainly can step up and take a command position, he doesn’t mind being lower on the totem pole and in fact seems to prefer sticking to working with the engines rather than running the entire ship.

He’s clever and resourceful, especially when it comes to anything mechanical. On numerous occasions he’s been able to modify equipment to get past sensors, transmit information through dangerous weather conditions, beat better technology, and in general is just talented with anything that can be taken apart and put back together again. As such, even if it’s not necessarily practical to take along the chief engineer on every away mission, he’s proven to be a useful person to have along in tense situations if only because he can improvise and cobble together just about anything in order to help the mission go smoother. While curious about new technologies, other planets and different cultures, Trip isn’t interested in finding out exactly how the future plays out, and would much rather just let things happen without worrying about whether he's doing something because he wants to, or because he thinks he's supposed to because some crazy timeline told him that's what was going to happen.

Although he has been known a little bit of a lady’s man, Trip can and does remain professional while actually on the job. For example, while working with an attractive Xyrillian engineer, he remained focused on the task at hand, although somewhat unfortunately still ended up getting pregnant due to a lack of understanding about human and Xyrillian biology. He’s got moral standards about relationships that he does his best to follow and in all of his romantic encounters while working with Enterprise, he’s remained respectful and is a perfect gentleman to the interested parties. Really, in terms of his more flirtatious side, he’s definitely not the same guy he was five years ago. Although things have definitely been less than perfect between the two of them, Trip’s found one woman he’ll probably always be somewhat involved with, and as such is less interested in picking up girls on shore leave, even if they actually are attractive alien women and not just shape shifters looking to mug him and Malcolm.

Space travel hasn’t been all smiles and sunshine, and Trip has – for better or worse - grown because his experiences on Enterprise. Namely, his sister Elizabeth was one of the millions killed in the Xindi attack on Earth. Her death devastated him, and for several weeks after the incident, he was a shadow of his usually good natured self. Instead, he was depressed, angry and incredibly bitter, which made him difficult to deal with. After starting neuropressure sessions with T’Pol, helping others cope with the loss of their own friends and family members and just some time to deal with everything that happened, by the end of the Xindi conflict, Trip was able to get more or less back to his normal self. He’s a little more mature than he was when the Enterprise left Earth for the first time, but remains his generally optimistic and friendly self.

Barge Reactions: Trip will think the Barge is pretty cool. He'll find it a little strange that he was here before, but it's not the first time he's encountered alternate timelines or futures, so he'll take it in stride. He will find it kind of weird if anyone tells him he and T'Pol were married and had a kid, but he probably won't mind in the long run since at this point in canon, they're pretty close/in a relationship and he hasn't yet had to go through the horrible awkwardness of watching the woman you love marry another man she's never met and has no feelings for! So that's good.

Again, as he's seen weird stuff in his time on Enterprise, he'll do his best to take floods and breaches in stride, and will probably be a huge geeky tourist when it comes to ports because it's basically an away mission without an actual mission. This isn't to say he won't take dangerous situations seriously, but he'll still probably run into ports without hesitating too much even after going through a few bad ones.

He'll definitely want to work in the engine room as much as will be allowed, because he loves his job pretty much more than anything (except pecan pie) and will be super psyched to get a chance to see how the Barge works, since by all accounts, it shouldn't. In general, he'll miss the routine and structure provided by Enterprise, and find it frustrating that the wardens are generally self serving instead of interested in working as a team. He'll try to make his own schedule and fill his day with stuff to do to avoid going stir crazy, and will probably try to come up with ways to provide things to do for other people too, including regular movie nights, basketball games and potentially even basic self defense classes if he's really bored and there's reason for it.

As a warden, Trip will be pretty friendly and informal with his inmate, although he'll want them to have a job or at least some productive way of keeping busy, because again, he doesn't get how you can't go crazy without a schedule on a ship like this. He'll want to check in regularly to discuss stuff, and probably will not necessarily wait for the inmate to bring up sensitive subjects. He'll try to keep his temper in check, but he won't be afraid to call them out on talking bullshit or lying, and he'll definitely have a pretty zero-tolerance policy for shenanigans.

Path to Redemption: -------

History: Trip on Memory Alpha

Sample Journal Entry:
Personal log, supplemental.

I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in my time on Enterprise, but the Barge might just take the cake. This isn’t really anything like I’d expected it to be. Of course, I’m not really sure what I did expect it to be, but this sure isn’t it. It’s definitely gonna take some gettin’ used to, but I guess I don’t have a lot of choice or anything. I’m not sure the Admiral’d appreciate me chickening out only a couple of days in, and I’m definitely not plannin’ on throwin’ in the towel anyways. I’ve got a deal ta follow through on.

[...]

Funny thing is, now that I think about it, I don’t really remember actually makin’ the deal. Or more like, I don’t remember meetin’ the Admiral. I know why I’m here, I mean, it’s kinda hard to forget about what-

… Computer, strike that last sentence.

I know why I’m here, I’m just not quite sure how it happened. Is that normal? Guess I’ll have to get around to askin’ someone eventually.

Wonder if the Admiral’ll let me get a look at the engines. There’s gotta be something powering this thing through… wherever it is we’re movin’, and I’d sure like to get a peek at it.

Sample RP:
From here!:
After finding the message Elizabeth had left him, Trip hadn't really known what to do with himself. He honestly felt kind of in shock, somewhere between wanting to cry and throw things before storming the bridge and punching the Admiral in the face because where the fuck did he get off on bringing people's dead family members back without giving them a chance to actually say anything to them? And there was a lot he wanted to say to her. It just felt like the cherry on the sundae of his shitty existence on the Barge, and he didn't want to deal with it right now.

He got up to leave his room, but as soon as he was in the hallway, he realized he didn't have any idea where he actually wanted to go. He didn't want to talk to T'Pol or Jim or anyone, really, because he didn't know what there was to say about it that he hadn't said already, years ago now, and he didn't want to bring it all up again. He didn't want to forget about Lizzie, but all that post traumatic stress and everything that went along with it had been handled. He didn't want to go through the grieving process again, he didn't want to deal with people asking him questions or talking about how wonderful the flood had been, and he really didn't think he wanted to be here at all right now.

So he headed to the pub. He helped himself to a bottle of whatever he could get his hands on first, a shot glass and set himself up in a corner away from everyone else, planning on getting really, really drunk, and good luck to anyone who decided to convince him this was the opposite of a healthy way to cope with what had happened.

Special Notes: Since he's from an earlier canon point than before, Trip is coming in fresh with no Barge memories! And alternatively for samples, he's got 56 journal entries from the last time he was here and he's pretty consistent character-wise between the two canon points. This one in particular is both IC and very funny, imho.