Theseus ‘Thesse’ Tropir's Questionnaire

Tropir has lived in the same city his whole life. However he’s moved from his suburban hometown (which may or may not be similar to Hawkins from Stranger Things) to attend a good university and has been living near the university since. His home is a shitty rundown (but manageable) apartment that he got for a slight discount because his parents knew the landlord. It can generously be called a bit bigger and with more separation of rooms than a studio apartment. He’s lived there for 4 years and relocated all his paraphernalia there, so it’s pretty cramped. But he’s alright with his housing condition, it could always be worse. He’s just glad to have all his belongings, tech and special edition merch. Also the wifi is surprisingly good.

Oh dear. The majority of his money goes to paying off his egregious student debt, as he had to take out some heavy loans even with what scholarships he had. His parents weren’t that well-off in the first place and he prioritised education over getting a job. Right now, he works multiple jobs, mostly remote and tech related. Some coding here and there, some tutoring, some articles and really anything that he doesn’t need to exert physical or social effort to do. He hasn’t scored an actual position yet because he got his Gift right when he graduated and really can’t do this stuff while having a full-time job. His favourite way to make money though is getting commissioned to make or edit TV Tropes pages.

Tropir is a secretly a sucker for happy endings and is actually a very optimistic person who hopes for the absolute best and believes (after his Contract, at least) that anything can be possible with determination, luck and just trying his darn best. He really thinks that he could improve the world if he tried, and after getting his Contract he really wants to do that. Y'know, just one mission at a time. He believes in the role of a hero, even though of course he can easily list off a million subversions of it and why being overly optimistic or idealistic is a big character flaw. Conversely, he does struggle with his ambition a lot and he himself doesn't know what lengths he would be made to go through... He wouldn't die for it, per say, or do anything that goes against his moral code, unless it involved, oh I don't know, saving the entire world?

Discovering the TV Tropes page for the first time. It is a special interest in every sense of the word, veering on obsession with how he views the world after he got his Contract. He really likes categorizing tropes and seeing them pop up again and again and again in media... And real life. In a way, he sees himself as an archivist who can use his knowledge to help others. Fiction is very important to him and he's just a massive nerd about it, in the corny way that you hear people describe their favorite book or movie saved their life, for Tropir it's the entire concept of tropes.

His foster parent who raised him, Cam Indra, was there for the majority of his life but they are a little detached, mostly just from Tropir having been unable to connect with them at first and carrying that awkwardness between them since. It's partially why he fully changed his name, so that he could have a degree of separation between his past. They were nice to him, but just kept him a little too sheltered and didn't proactively try to connect with him which contributed to his anti-socialness. They talk maybe once a year, just to check that they're both alive.

His college professor that he admires, Professor Fudd, who taught his literature elective.

He is closest to his rival-turned-friend, who he only knows online as 'bazinga69'. They used to beef on the forums but kinda went through an enemies to friends arc. However they know next-to-nothing about their irl personas.

Tropir has a very limited memory of his childhood. His real parents are unknown but he’s been living with his foster parent his whole life until 4 years ago. His seemed to have been put in foster care very early on and he has no clue who his biological parents are, nor has he looked. He suspects some supernatural involvement in their disappearance but he doesn’t care enough to look into it. Besides, he knows that’s just calling for danger. He was a very friendless kid at school but not necessarily a lonely one, he just always preferred books over people. He was definitely undiagnosed audHD during his school years and that made things pretty hard for him. He was good at memorising information of course, but despite his interest in fiction he’s not very good at creativity in the traditional sense. He majored in Computer Science in university and he isn’t a genius or anything, he just tries hard.

No. Tropir is aro ace and has known that for a while, though it was something that made him even more of an outcast as a child. He cringes at a lot of romance tropes and could never imagine him falling for anyone. However, he has had times where he really wished he could just step out of his anti-social comfort zone and make friends with certain people. He values platonic camaraderie a lot as a genuine believer in the Power of Friendship. He considers his aforementioned online best friend, bazinga69, perhaps as someone he ‘fell’ for. If there’s anything that can make Tropir fall for a person, it’s being able to hold a conversation with him about what he cares for and provide intelligent and stimulating commentary.

Tropir is scared of many things but mostly losing himself, he knows that a lot of stories like these come with great costs for great power and while he hasn't seen anything to prove that the Contracts can corrupt yet, he knows it's a matter of time before the stakes ramp up and he or someone he meets does something that crosses a line. He is scared of failure, as he thinks that it's his job as the genre-savvy and classically intelligent one to simply know things and come up with the perfect solution every time. Failure comes hard for him, and while he can cope with it well enough he knows that he hasn't reached a point of no return yet. He doesn't like thinking of what would happen if he failed in a contract, especially the ones that are for the better of the world. He's scared of others finding out about his insecurity over his anti-socialness, even if to him it seems completely utterly obvious that he is a sheltered loner type. He craves connection with other Contractors as people who are in the same situation as him but he is very scared of getting too close and the harms that can come from that.

His most prized possessions include:

His portable laptop! It's been with him his full university life and a while before that. It's not the best or the newest or the fanciest, but it's got memories attached to it and that's what matters. While his digital files are consistently backed up to his hard drive, he does still care a lot for the physical object and associates it with better times of his life. (Before school.)

His paraphernalia. Do you think he can name favourites? No, not really. Every piece of merch he owns is precious to him, as someone who grew up poor. He had to work hard to earn them! One of his pricier possessions would be a prop from a film set that he got through sheer luck, from some indie meta horror movie that he likes. It'd be like a decorative gun that he lovingly... hides under his laundry pile. Lovingly.

It's morbidly funny that despite everything going on in his life due to Contracts and training and the like, his main issue is still money. Of course, this itself is a pretty common trope and also something he's not at all surprised by. Think superheroes that have to juggle a superpowered life with realistic responsibilities, like work and rent and all that jazz. He has a lot less responsibilities than Spiderman, but he still doesn't want to get a job because he thinks that one way or another something will come up in either work work or Contract work that interferes deeply with the other, and he simply would like to prevent the consequences. This means that he stays poor and is still struggling with student debt, and making ends meet is a lot more stressful than he would like it to be. Heck, he hasn't had a nutritious homemade meal consisting of more than 5 ingredients in almost a year.

Oh, the classics for a kind of burnt-out post-university Comp Sci major who's trying to pay off student loans. Coffee, black coffee. Energy drinks if he's pulling or has pulled an all-nighter. The same cycle of 5 shirts (his collection is expanding from all the new places he visits from Contracts) and at the very least he has the self-awareness to shower frequently. He seems put together enough to other people, and that's the standard he sets for himself every day. Presentable. He has a backlog of remote work and hobby stuff that he fluctuates between doing to keep himself motivated. Since becoming a Contractor, he's started jogging a bit in the morning, but he feels pretty self-conscious about exercising in public so he doesn't do it for long. He has a playlist that he puts on as well for his morning routine, except it's not themed at all and is just a collection of every single song he vaguely likes.

Tropir, who's not at all savvy when it comes to social situations, does the classic and stereotypical black tuxedo-with-bowtie fit and would try to look professional but in a way that didn't make them stand out at all. I mean, it covers job interviews, galas, impressing someone, etc. If it was something really special he'd specifically try to look for a cute green outfit. It wouldn't take him long at all to get ready, he doesn't care much for how he appears beyond presentable. No matter what he does though, even if he barely put any effort into his look, I think he would have a bit of Hollywood Homely to him and he would severely underestimate how he looked. He would need to hype himself up a lot beforehand, usually by giving himself a pep talk or talking through all the possibilities that could happen during the social interaction. 

He's never cared much for birthdays mostly because he's never had too many friends to do any kind of big celebration. He would definitely treat himself a little bit more, he would get a little cupcake or the like. He likes cupcakes more than birthday cakes. For his next birthday specifically, he'd appreciate it a lot more than his past ones considering the lethality of Contract work. If he had the time, he might go back to his hometown just so he could celebrate it with his parent, and that would probably be the only other person he physically interacts with on his birthday. 

Tropir ponders every day whether or not it was worth it to join the Contracts. Ultimately he decides on yes, but he knows his life is now fraught with danger and that he's going to pile on trauma after trauma since there is still only so much enhanced therapy can do. However, he does wish he asked more about the whole deal or had more of a choice in the matter, given his rushed initiation. He doesn't feel shame in his deicison, but every time he sees someone get hurt or die he does feel regretful. After all, he spends most of his free time analyzing and reflecting on what happened during Contracts, albeit in his own unique way. 

As for his greatest regret outside of the Contracts, it would be that he didn't try harder to get any more scholarships and that he is now swamped with student debt. You know, regular people problems.

Tropir thinks (or I suppose, knows) that gift manifestation runs off the Contractor's own belief in what Harbingers think Contractors want. So it's a mix of both, really. He prefers his gfits to be inherent potential, made supernatural by the power of the Harbingers, but he also plans ahead and would be willing to request specific gifts such as his cherished weapon, Chekhov's Gun. Through suspension of disbelief of course, the gifts find their way to him and he simply wakes up after a successful Contract knowing that a gift is soon to be on the way. Since a lot of his gifts are analytical and needs to be actively activated, he does spend an embarrassing bit of time trying out different things and seeing what new power he has as well as the limitations of the powers that he already owns. For instance, he knows his glasses are his focus for his heightened sense of perception, because he didn't feel the enhanced power flowing through him until he put them on. Kind of like a reverse Tobey Maguire spiderman discovering his powers situation. 

Tropir is agnostic, but takes any proof of existence of god with a big grain of salt considering the existence of the supernatural and the oversaturated trope of false gods. I mean, what measure is a non-human? Regardless, he’s too skeptical and grounded to be spiritual in any way. He believes in the general concept of fate and that it is both kind and uncaring at the same time. If really pressed and manipulated into sharing, he will admit that he’s not opposed to the ‘religious’ idea that he and everyone he knows are fictional characters or in a ‘simulation’ and that ‘God’ is an author that can never reveal itself. However it doesn’t affect his life much, and he actually isn’t a fan of the trope where some fourth-breaking protagonist is driven insane by knowing they’re fictional. He simply doesn’t believe in a pantheon. Instead that whatever God is, it’s a singular entity calling all the shots forever and predetermining everything.

It actually has encouraged a few of his worldviews on Surprisngly Realistic Outcomes. It certainty angers him the extent that Harbingers are uncaring and toying with contractors, wanting to keep them in the dark as much as possible and sending them on missions that don’t benefit the world in any way. And that most Contractors don’t seem to use their powers for the betterment of society, at least not in a way that exposes the existence of contractors. However he knows and categorises the whole deal through a Slidng Scale of Idealism vs Cynicism, and ultimately all he can do is keep trying to achieve his goal of ‘solving’ contracts as much as possible and preventing danger from befalling himself and others. However he does find his recent flexibility in morals due to pragmatism concerning. He has done some things he isn’t comfortable with in the name of winning contracts. But if he loses, he doesn’t get rewarded, and like the trolley problem, he thinks it’s utilitarian to keep himself alive. 

Tropir has a frequently recurring cast in his Contract related life, so to speak. The obvious first answer is Adrannis, who he moved in with after a move gone wrong and is immensely grateful for. The two of them have been through thick and thin, and that kind of bond sticks with someone. He admires Adrannis' resolve and favours their practicality, meshing well with their brand of anti-socialness. Sometimes they're a little flippant, but he doesn't mind, only hopes others don't see them in a bad light. Tropir is glad Adrannis is often there on his Contracts. 

Another one he'd consider a friend would be Jacob Sterns. The high schooler turned Contractor was an intriguing trope for him from the start, and Jacob's average and laid-back nature has won over Tropir a bit. His skills and expertise in the British Museum is helpful too. Overall they've had many successful Contracts together and Tropir chalks it up to their teamwork. 

Although he's not as close, Tropir also considers Iktan a possible friend, more than just an ally at least. He appreciates the time he gave him a potion and his apology, is still spooked out by his general... theme, but he could get over it. He likes how Iktan is quick to come up with ideas.

A perfect room to Tropir? Maybe a cinema of some sort. A classic movie experience that comes out of a picture. He doesn't like crowds, so it'd be mostly empty. That's his comfort place, with movies included of course. Cinemas just have that kind of homey and cozy feel, you know? His best memories as a child were watching movies with his foster parent, so the associated memory and nostalgia contributes to the choice. Good wifi is a must, so are a place for snacks. The environment being dimly lit would be nice too. 

I mean, this is if he doesn't cheese the answer and just reply with a room with infinite boons, since that would then be a 'perfect' room. 

Tropir is perfectly happy to stick to his role of not-particularly-physically-capable but perspicacious The Smart Guy. He's, at the very least attempted to, hone himself to play the part ever since he was prescribed a reading level above his grade and a pair of glasses. He has no qualms that he's ever going to be 'the best' at any particular skill he excels at, but there is a sense of pride and expectation that he gives himself to do well in his supposed areas of expertise. To use the common term 'min-maxing' would be accurate. Of course there's no one who's more obsessed with TV Tropes than he is, though it's been a mixed case of usefulness when it comes to the Contracts. He certainly hopes he carries enough knowledge to make for a good skeleton-clutching-a-journal-with-just-the-information-you-need when he dies. Kind of a morbid anticipation, but even in undeath he's focused on his usefulness. Indeed, at the end of the day, he just wants his skills and expertise to be useful, and that's his philosophy.

Everyone draws the line somewhere, and Tropir... believes in that. To use the trope name, he believes in a Moral Event Horizon. He's done some horrible things that completely go against his morals for the Contracts, coming teeteringly close to breaking a limit voluntarily- But never actually has. Murder is the said limit, of course. Morality is iffy here. He's already a completely different person from before he started a Contract, having had to grapple with killing someone (a human!) during his first ever one. But for now, all his kills have been in self-defense. 

It's not about the law, but just what a hypothetical audience would condone. He fully believes that there will be consequences for those who cross a Moral Event Horizon, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster et. cetera. And well, the Good Guys win, right? He wouldn't want to be caught in a 'You and I are not so different' moment. In a realistic note, it's more akin to wanting to die with honor, but maybe somewhere out there is the narrative tool that will let him live on as long as he's determined and Not-as-evil-as-he-could-have-been.

Songs are not ranked in any particular order.

1. Go Get Your Gun - The Dear Hunter

This is a song I apply to The Contracts in general, but it is especially fitting for Tropir with his signature weapon of course being 'Chekhov's Gun', appropriately one that he uses every Contract. 

"Go get your gun, get your gun, and let's find out what it does
Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot
We haven't won, and if we win, and if the morning light sets in
We've cheated fate again"

Every win in a Contract is one won through the skin of his teeth, through violence, through struggle and determination, through some act of quick thinking that lets him and his fellow Contracts 'cheat fate again'. 

"And to those who die, please try to understand
That for those who die, we try the best we can
With our one foot in the grave
While the other one's kickin' its way right down to hell"

Tropir has had 4 other Contractors die during a Contract with him and he has cared deeply about all of them, I think this is a pretty self-explanatory lyric. Although he lives and they've died, he remains with one foot in the grave, always at risk of death as well.

2. TV Tropes - Stranger Echo

Title drop aside, the mindset of comparing life to a series of tropes is, well, Tropir's whole gimmick.

"and who are you
to try to improvise
This is not your show
You are just a trope"

The internal battle between 'You Can't Fight Fate' and 'Screw Destiny' is ingrained in such a genre aware character, and I think this song reflects that too. 

"But they've never walked in your shoes
There are reasons why you never get a clue
There are things that are motivating you"

Motivation, the driving force of a character, also exemplified as a strong theme in the Contracts that Contractors are only chosen due to their ambitions. This song just makes me feel big 'fictional character realization mental breakdown' energy and I like the ambiguous perspective of the lyrics. That Contractual Genre-Blindness is a thing.

3. Credits Song For My Death - vivivivi

Chosen for the genre-aware name and overall epic composition that I think portrays Tropir's will to survive.

4. Kill The Lights - The Birthday Massacre

"We kill the lights and put on a show"

A bit edgy for his tastes but ultimately a good representation of his more cynical point-of-view for what The Contracts is to him, a bit of a tragedy where everyone has lost something in a way. Kind of seeing the same tropes again and again foreshadowing the same disasters.

5. That Funny Feeling - Bo Burnham

Tropir likes being meta and commenting on dramatic irony and this song also does that. I do think it reflects his internal struggle between the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs Cynicism, kind of.

6. How Far We've Come - Matchbox 20

Lol, putting this in here for as the 'song that can be used in every fandom amv'. I mean, yeah, Tropir has come pretty far, slowly but surely gaining gifts and getting more powerful yet inhuman. The stakes also get higher and higher, and Tropir knows nothing lasts forever, but the journey one takes is always worth documenting. Which is how I am interpreting the song for him.

7. Wait For It - Hamilton

"Death doesn't discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes
And if there's a reason I'm still alive
When everyone who loves me has died
I'm willing to wait for it
I'm willing to wait for it"

Deep down, perhaps foolishly, Tropir yearns for information. Like the classic horror protagonist that undergoes the horrors for knowledge, Tropir continues to do Contracts to find out the truth of the Harbingers and the why of Contracts, why they exist, why he was chosen, why the system is the way it is. He has a long way to go but he won't stop until he discovers the truth. He's in it until the bitter end. He also wants to make Contracts go as smooth as possible, not that it's been going too well for him. He wants to prove genre-savviness as a legitimate skill and cut down on Idiot Ball or Just Eat Gilligan moments. Due to this, it's definitely not in the foreseeable future for him to retire- After all, Retirement Equals Death. If he stops doing Contracts, he'd be shunted into cameo character status or worse. So, yes. He's going to keep doing Contracts even if it kills him, with the hopes of sharing knowledge in an accessible manner pre-and-post-death. 

Bad writing. Edit wars. Third act stupidity. Lots of cliche things are Tropir's Beserk Button, but they usually evoke a sense of annoyance and second-hand embarrassment than pure anger. Just a bit of "ugh, not this again, I'm pissed off" and not the type of thing that fuels him into a rage. Even the worst of the worst of those can't really get more action out of him than a long winding rant, and he's seen enough of it to be able to pick his battles. You know, a reasonable lesson learned by someone who's been on the internet since they had unrestricted access to it as a kid. No matter how angry he is, he takes care not to feed the trolls. In private he'll be a hater, but he acts sufficiently nonchalant to mask his fury online, save the rants for private messages to his online friends. 

On a more serious note, injustice and bigotry boil his blood quite a bit. People who take advantage of others piss him the fuck off and he believes they'll get their due karma- Even if it might not happen within his lifetime. He doesn't understand how some people can be so small-minded, selfish, arrogant and plain hateful, to make things worse for so many other people. The type of people that make you say "this is why we can't have nice things". Detachedly, Tropir just thinks it's illogical and that being nice is more advantageous than. Not being that. Even if you don't mean it, at least try to get along with people so that they'll help you out when you need to? 

He's seen enough villains to know one in real life, and those are the people that he despises. But indeed, to 'go down to their level' is to also become a monster yourself, something else that he hates about the world. He just turns that anger into willpower.

Tropir doesn't keep a lot of secrets. Just the, y'know, tiny little thing like BEING A CONTRACTOR THAT TAKES MORALLY QUESTIONABLE JOBS FROM REALITY-BREAKING HARBINGERS SENT BY PROBABLY-FUCKING-ELDRITCH-HORRORS. Not very unique compared to the Contractor community, but it is one that he's had to come to grips with and questions hiding from the world. Well, in the end self-perseverance wins out. It can't go out to the public, it'd be too dangerous and messy if he was the one to spill the beans. Ordinary software engineer by day, gun-toting quasi-seer by... once every month or so. Hey, it's a classic, of course that's the secret that Tropir is going to focus on. This 'second life'. He very much wishes he could share his findings with more people, if not the public then at least a majority of other contractors, to have some way of preventing more losses if everyone just had more information and was willing to help each other out and share. Unfortunately it did not go well for him the last time he tried to do it. 

Tropir would probably deny becoming a Harbinger if that was ever an option, believing that his relative humanity is what will keep him sane and well, human. Nevertheless, he would probably have a generic title-name like The Troper (...yes, very surprising) or The Meta Guy. He'd probably go by multiple similar nom de guerres, maybe something like The Author Avatar, never being able to stick with one. He'd be a lot more eccentric if he had the powers of a Harbinger, directly doing Deadpool shit and callously talking to the 'audience'. He would also be very talkative to potential Contractors he's going to recruit, analyzing them and the paradigm they're going for in front of their face.

He would try to run Contracts that will lead to utilitarian good or ones that are interesting and have a twist. Honestly, he'd probably run only a few in rotation and just see what changes between them.

The first Contract Tropir had ever been in, a fellow true newbie died and Tropir had to put him down himself. That really set the tone of the Contracts and gave him experience with other Contractors dying. Although he didn't have direct involvement with the funerary proceedings of Sucram, he attended his funeral once he found out where it was happening through some research. And he did the same with Jenny, whose laptop is currently in his possession after she loaned it. 

But those are for one-offs.

Having done almost every Contract with Adrannis and literally moving in with them, Tropir would mourn hard if they met their demise in front of his very eyes. He knows Adrannis hasn't got many friends and family, that the other person they're the closest to is a fellow named Gaser. He wasn't talked with Adrannis about it but he would assume their material possessions would go to that guy. He also assumes that they would like their money to go to homeless organizations. Whatever Adrannis' plans are, Tropir would try his damn best to see it through, including their cremation.

As for looting bodies? If he comes across an artifact from a deceased Contractor, and it's something he sees a use for, and there's no one better to have it, he would take it out of practicality. But for the most part, he's fine with relying on his own set. He hopes that in his untimely demise Chekhov's Gun will go to someone with a good heart, and wouldn't mind at all if Adrannis were to 'loot' it.