PFC Tommy Burgess

PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Ros
OOC Journal: N/A
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: Over 18
Email + IM: rosloops at gmail; pyrocornflakes (AIM)
Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Private First Class Thomas “Tommy” Burgess
Canon: Stop-Loss
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: At the point of his death.
Number: --- » 010 » 021

[Warning: Suicide is referenced in several sections of the app.]

Setting: Tommy comes from a real-world setting identical to our own, set in 2007. The film—particularly Tommy’s scenes—is centered in the small Texas town of Brazos and its accompanying army base (likely a fictionalized version of Fort Hood). Wiki of the film.

History:
Tommy had a fairly normal, unremarkable upbringing. Born and raised in a small town in Nebraska, Tommy was brought up the only child of a working class couple. Growing up, he was an average kid—decent enough grades (though he was no scholar), played sports in school, was of middling popularity. His mother died when he was young, and his father was often too busy for time with him. After high school, he enrolled in community college for a year, but found that it didn’t stick. Tommy was a bit directionless, unsure of what he actually wanted to do in the long-term, what kind of a career he really wanted. Looking for purpose and feeling a duty to serve his country, he enlisted in the army.

He was stationed at a base near Brazos, Texas, where he met Jeanie, one of the locals. The two quickly hit it off and began dating. After a year, they were engaged and living in their own place in Brazos. Shortly before Tommy was deployed to Iraq, the two were married, and Tommy was gone before they could even open their wedding gifts.

Tommy’s squad, led by Staff Sergeant Brandon King, was stationed in/near the town of Tikrit, located northwest of Baghdad. The squad bonded through their shared experiences and became good friends, and Tommy grew especially close to Paul “Preacher” Colson, whom he regarded as a brother. Tommy sort-of found religion (he calls himself a Baptist, but is playfully told he’s not a real one by King) and was baptized by Preacher, strengthening their bond.

One day towards the end of their deployment, the squad was doing routine checks and searches at a checkpoint just outside the town. A car full of insurgents speeds by, firing at the soldiers, who jump into their vehicles and follow them into an alley. There, they’re ambushed, and the scene quickly becomes chaotic, as shots are fired from rooftops. At one point, Tommy’s nearly hit by an RPG (rocket propelled grenade), but he’s saved by Rico Rodriguez, who pushes him out of the way and takes the brunt of damage—Rico’s badly burned and maimed, ultimately losing his sight, a leg and an arm. The RPG also takes out one of the Humvees and the three men inside.

Tommy, somewhat dazed and shaken, goes over to where Preacher is, and they fire some shots at the insurgents. However, as Preacher’s reloading, he takes a bullet to the jaw and another to the neck, falling over dead in Tommy’s lap. Tommy fires back at the insurgents in retaliation, and soon, the ambush is over and the insurgents are either dead or escaped.

What’s left of the squad completes their tour and soon returns stateside, coming home to the base in Brazos. At this point, Tommy’s a changed man, more sullen and withdrawn, traumatized by the events. On the bus ride back to the base, he keeps to himself, listening to music on his headphones. He only seems happy when he’s reunited with Jeanie.

That night, the squad heads out to a celebration in Brazos, dancing and drinking with their friends and families. Although he’s seen laughing a few times, Tommy’s generally in a dark mood during the party. He fixates on the ambush and on Preacher’s killers, talks about how he wants to go back and get revenge for what happened to his friend. When a man comes up and asks Jeanie to dance, Tommy intervenes and shoos him off, only to get up and start a fistfight with the man when he dismissively calls Tommy “hero.”

After the fight’s broken up, Tommy continues to drink—heavily. That night, Jeanie kicks him out of the house, telling him to come back when he’s got his shit together. He drives off, drunk, and makes it to a friend’s house (Steve), just as he blacks out at the wheel and oh, so slowly stops his car at a lamppost. He finds Brandon there and asks if he can stay at his ranch house for a few days, just until things are patched up with Jeanie. Brandon agrees, and the three of them go to the ranch.

The next day is one of relaxation, as the boys get drunk and shoot up Tommy’s wedding gifts. That night, while everyone’s drinking and watching videos that “Eyeball,” a squad mate, put together, Tommy’s withdrawn, heavily drunk and seemingly out of it. Finally, after staring off into space and saying nothing for a while, he expresses remorse for shooting the gifts.

The next morning, they all head to the base to report for duty. Tommy shows up late and still drunk. Brandon reprimands him, tells him that he needs to get his act together because he and Steve are getting out now, and they won’t be around anymore to look after him. Tommy insists that he’s fine, that he’s not drunk, and, put-off by Brandon’s disbelief, leaves.

Meanwhile, Brandon gets stop-lossed and, rather than get his discharge and get out, is told he has to report for another tour. So, he goes AWOL. During this time, Tommy gets super drunk and drives his car into Jeanie’s workplace. For this, he gets arrested for a DUI and has to get bailed out by Steve and Lt. Col. Raylan Givens Boot Miller. Boot reprimands Tommy for his massive fuck-up, and Tommy pleads to give him another chance. The army’s all he’s got, the only thing he’s good for and the only family he has.

Despite getting another chance, he continues drinking heavily and trying to win Jeanie back, to the point where she files a restraining order against him. Drunk pretty much all the time now, Tommy begins lashing out at everyone around him, and finally, he goes too far, throwing a bottle through the window of a jewelry store in a drunken fit (after claiming he can win Jeanie back and then lashing out at his friends when they tell him to forget about it). The alarm goes off, and it’s presumed that the police arrive.

At this point, Tommy’s out of chances. He gets a BCD (Bad Conduct Discharge) from the Army. He goes back to the ranch with Steve and a few friends and, while they get ready to shoot things up, plays his guitar. While he’s glum about his future, he seems to be in decent enough spirits, singing songs and chatting with the guys. After slyly swiping a shotgun shell from one of his friends, he walks off, singing a song and leaving the others to their target practice. Once he’s away from them, he shoots himself.

Personality: Tommy used to be a really friendly, good-natured guy, and he has the potential to still be one. However, he’s a person who’s been thoroughly broken down by trauma and ensuing depression, which has sent him on an alcohol-fueled downward spiral. Although we don’t see much of who he was before the ambush that took his best friend’s life (and several others), brief flashback clips show him to be just a regular, likable guy. He seemed friendly and outgoing, liked to play his guitar and sing, goofed off with the others. Once he returns home, he’s been irrevocably changed by war and the accompanying trauma of watching those close to him get gunned down and blown up.

These days, he’s more sullen, and he tries to (badly) cope with his problems through lots and lots of alcohol while putting on a front that everything’s okay. While Tommy will admit to his problems from time to time (admitting to Boot that he’s gone a little sideways when he gets caught on a DUI, for example), normally he’ll just evade, deny or lie. Sometimes, he tries to act like the old Tommy—laid back, playful, all smiles—to throw his loved ones off the scent, and it may work briefly.

However, Tommy’s far from a functioning alcoholic. His lies and acts and promises can only be propped up for so long, and they’re generally not believed by those who know him well. Brandon, for example, doesn’t buy it for a second when Tommy shows up to report for duty drunk while claiming that he only smelled like alcohol because they’d all been drinking the day before. Further, he generally sabotages things through his own alcohol-fueled actions. He says he’ll get his shit together—then he drives his car into his wife’s workplace. He says he’ll change if he has one more chance—then he drunkenly throws a bottle through a shop window. It’s clear to anyone who knows him that he’s falling down a dangerous hole, but nobody seems to know how to save him.

Tommy’s impulse control is impaired by his drinking and his depression. He acts or speaks without thinking, then sometimes feels regret once he comes to his senses. When he’s at a celebration welcoming the troops home, he suddenly starts a fight with a man who asked his wife for a dance. Tommy seems content to just let him go on his way after correcting him (“My wife said no, are you fucking deaf?”), but then the man dismissively calls him “hero,” and that sets him off suddenly and without warning. When Jeanie kicks him out of the house, he drives off drunk without a care for his or others’ safety. And, the next day, (after some more drinking) he shoots up their wedding gifts, making a game of it—only to express remorse when he seems to come down from his bourbon-fueled rush. Sometime later, he also runs his mouth—then immediately backtracks—and throws a bottle through a window in a fit of anger after nearly driving away Steve, his remaining support after Brandon went AWOL and Jeanie got a restraining order against him.

When he’s not putting on an act, Tommy seems quiet, withdrawn and sullen. During the bus ride back to Brazos, he appears to keep entirely to himself, maintaining a blank expression on his face. During the party, he seems more like he’s talking to himself when he describes his plans for revenge against the Iraqis for killing Preacher, and his expression and words are cold and dark. Further, after he shoots up his wedding gifts and drinks himself into a stupor, he sits in a complete daze, not reacting to any visual stimuli until he finally speaks up about shooting the gifts. It’s difficult to say if he’s zoned out because he has a tendency to mentally check out, or because he’s just so drunk that he’s unable to focus.

In a way, Tommy’s entire life is wrapped up in the army. He doesn’t believe he can pursue a life outside of it, and he considers it his family. His sense of self worth is entirely tied into his role as a soldier. Even before his downward spiral, it’s clear that the army means a lot to him—all of his tattoos, for example, are related to the army, and he’s close enough with one of his fellow soldiers (Preacher) that he refers to him as his brother, keeping in touch with Preacher’s family after he dies. As far as he's concerned, he's no good as anything but a soldier. He’s desperate to have a cause or purpose, and when he loses it through his BCD, he has nothing left.

His suicide was not an impulsive act. He appears sober in the scene leading up to it, deliberately acts as normal as possible to throw off his friends, and sneakily and very casually pockets a shotgun shell while chatting with them. He even plays his guitar and sings a song with them as he’s walking off to do the deed. As far as he’s concerned, he’s lost everything by this point—he has no prospects (or at least, he believes he doesn’t, because of his BCD), no family, no army. This is, in fact, the only planned act that Tommy commits in the entire film.

Aboard the Tranquility, Tommy will likely be completely dazed at first. He should be dead, as far as he’s concerned, and so the fact that he’s alive and well won’t quite click with him at first. There is, of course, the question of whether he'd be a continued suicide risk in the game. I think he'll see his arrival on the Tranquility as a sort of second chance, and thus, will at least take some time to try to assess the situation and his new life-- he may even find purpose again in taking up a job that calls on his skills as a soldier. It's also possible that he'll have lost his nerve, since he tried once and ended up in outer space for his efforts. He’ll probably make himself at home at the bar and drink himself into a stupor. However, give him a purpose again, or at least keep him away from the alcohol, and the old Tommy just may start to come back. He’ll need a lot of help along the way, but there’s hope for him.

Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: Tommy doesn’t have any special powers or super abilities; however, he is a trained soldier in the infantry. Tommy's experienced in urban combat, has at least basic survival and hand-to-hand skills, and is proficient in firearms. He's also decent enough at playing the guitar and singing.

Inventory:
• Acoustic guitar
• Dark-blue t-shirt
• Jeans
• Socks
• Underwear
• Black and white Converse sneakers
• Watch
• Gold wedding ring
• Dog tags

Appearance: Tommy's played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Tommy looks fairly unremarkable, like a completely ordinary person. With close-cropped brown hair and brown eyes, he’s a skinny, lanky individual. When not in uniform, he tends to dress very simply, wearing t-shirts and jeans, sometimes a hoodie or an unbuttoned shirt over it. At times, his demeanor can be a little spacey (because he's often drunk), but he tends to carry himself very loosely and casually. He has several tattoos: crossed rifles on his right bicep (infantry insignia), an American flag on his forearm, and another infantry tattoo on his left forearm.

In uniform and out of uniform.

Age: Early 20s

AU Clarification:N/A

SAMPLES
Log Sample: Tommy’s shuffling down the corridor in a daze, as if he's still not sure where he is or what's going on. There are others around, people wearing black uniforms and passing by him like he’s not even there. That’s fine; he might as well not be. He’s going through the motions, anyway; his goddamn mind still hasn’t caught up with his body. It’s back in the room with the pod, where he’d woken up submerged in some kind of thick liquid with a tube jammed down his fucking throat. How long ago was that? Ten minutes ago? An hour? Longer...? Back in the pod, It had taken him a moment to be able to string two thoughts together, but when he finally could, he wondered if this was a hospital. If he’d fucked up again and couldn’t even get that one, last act right.

When the tube withdrew and the water began to drain, he thought it might’ve been Heaven. Or Hell.

All he knows is: wherever he is, it sure as shit isn’t Brazos, Texas.

He stops walking and blinks slowly, as if just now realizing that he's in the middle of a strange hallway. Tommy looks down at himself, taking note of the black jumpsuit-- just like the others-- and then it hits him: he left all his worldly possessions behind in the locker. Just an extra set of clothes and his guitar. Apparently, that was all he needed to take to the afterlife or whatever this is.

It’s funny. The last time he’d been under water, he was baptized. They say it’s like being born again, baptism. He's wasn't so sure about that, before. He didn't feel all that different when it happened.

Then he died. He died and he woke up, practically buck-ass naked, underwater. Born again with a second chance.

He smiles, then laughs at the sheer absurdity or irony (is it irony?) of it, but there’s no humor in his voice. A passer-by pauses just long enough to give him a funny look, and Tommy’s laughter dies suddenly.

“The fuck you looking at?”

The stranger shakes his head and keeps walking away from Tommy.

“Asshole...” Tommy murmurs. As he continues on his way, there’s new life in his steps. Purpose. He doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on, but he’s awake now, and alert.

Jesus, he needs a fucking drink.

Comms Sample:
[He’s sitting on the edge of his bed-- unmade-- guitar in hand. Tommy’s looking down on it, his expression solemn and thoughtful as he idly strums out a few chords. Then, he looks at the camera, and it’s clear that he’s not at all sober. This only becomes more apparent when he speaks, his words slurring.]

Always wanted to see the world. Get the fuck out of my hometown and see, I don’t know, Japan. Australia. Germany. Whatever... [Strum.] But I never thought I’d find myself in outer fucking space. Pretty badass, I guess.

Anyway, this is PFC Tommy Burgess. [He pauses in his strumming to give the camera a mock salute.] Reporting for duty.

[He strums again and throws the camera a crooked smile.] Guess I'm looking for work. So. How can a guy with a Big Chicken Dinner get by around here? [He throws that phrase in there casually, jokingly, but it clearly means something more than he's letting on, which may be apparent to anyone with an army background. He laughs softly-- although there's a hint of bitterness to it-- and goes back to playing his guitar.]