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.