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thepupthatmattersPlayer name: Qi
Characters played: Eileen (A♣), Cadogan (J♦), Evan (4♣), Chives (5♠), Cynric (J), Rita (9♥)
Character Name: Aleksei Volkov
Age: 16 (July 1, 1997)
Suit/Rank: 2♠
History: Aleksei was born in Budapest, Hungary to a single mother, Katerina Volkov, and handed off almost immediately to his maternal grandparents in Karcag. From the beginning it was clear that Nagyanyja and Nagyapa Volkov would be the ones raising the boy. They didn’t see it as much of a hardship, and for the most part, Aleksei was raised in both stability and affection in their little corner of the world, either bundled on his grandmother’s hip out to the fields or tumbling around in his grandfather’s shop. Now and then, his mother appeared with an influx of cash and a distant sort of affection. She was a faint constant in his life, always half-expected and never much missed if she didn’t appear regularly.
Starting school brought on the proper revelation that he didn’t have a father—that even the other little boys being raised by grandparents had a picture, a name; a ghost of a man. His grandparents yielded nothing under questioning, having never met the man. His mother would pet his hair and tell him he would learn when he was older. The question mark stuck like a thorn in an otherwise pleasant childhood, the one piece of himself he could never quite put into place with everything else.
It became something of a catchall excuse for him. If he acted out in school—and the fighting never got overly serious; they always got caught long before that—he learned to set his eyes to watering and murmur that he hadn’t been taught well how to be a young man. If candy he hadn’t paid for found its way into his pocket or another boy’s answers found their way onto his test, he concocted elaborate tales of following in the footsteps of a man who had clearly been a thief, the way it was obviously compulsively carried in his son’s blood.
On his thirteenth birthday, his mother sat him down for a disappointingly brief conversation. She worked, she explained, with lots of people from all over the world (although what she worked doing wasn’t entirely clear). His father had been one of them—a colleague she had known for a week, slept with approximately nine months before Aleksei’s birth, whose face she had recalled firmly only when the boy started to grow toward a young man with a shadow of resemblance. There was no name, and there never would be.
The half-imagined figure, almost as permanent as his actual physical mother, vanished suddenly. It left a gap in his heart—and that gap made him realize what a gap lacking a mother who stuck around also left.
At fourteen, his grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a burden to scrape together the money, but Aleksei was sent to boarding school in a half-misguided attempt to teach him independence. The scuffles took an uptick in severity, but they also began to be more artfully cleaned up, leave less of a trail. At fifteen, he received the call that his grandmother had passed as well. It was time for a change.
Luckily for him, a benefactor had taken interest in the boy. Arrangements were made for him to stay at the school more permanently; money was provided for survival on holidays. Books above the grade level began appearing in his room.
Then came the books on combat tactics
By the time the boy was sixteen, he was deemed ready. The benefactor stepped forward—a professor who had known, amazingly, both his parents. He told Aleksei quietly of a place where men were ranked, filed, honed into tools. Where wayward souls could go to fill the missing pieces other people had left in their lives. Where, in fact, a piece of his life had vanished off to, sixteen years ago.
The next morning, Aleksei Volkov set foot in the Spade Castle, ready to find his father.
Personality: In most ways, Aleksei is an incredibly typical young man. He can maintain himself pleasantly enough when he makes the effort. When left to his own devices, he tends to slouch, to roll his eyes and line everything with sarcasm. When asked to present—when called on to perform—he stands exactingly and jumps exactly on time.
Generally, he floats somewhere toward optimistic, in spite of the last few years. He was raised with quite a strong sense of self-esteem and the general quiet belief that there’s good in the world to balance out the bad. There also wasn’t nearly enough time in his emotional education put into explaining that there are absolutely people in the world whose only intention is to break other people down into nothing.
The quality which best defines him for the moment, however, is his malleability. Aleksei very much likes to make people happy. The person of the most authority he’s with will be used as a model, a template for himself. Now that he’s moved into such a closed society, guesses are this will mean him getting molded more permanently toward the sharp, standoffish form of the prototypical Spade.
Appearance: At sixteen, Aleksei has already begun shooting up toward close to his adult height, and is continuing to grow in awkward spurts. Over the next year, he’ll likely be shooting up the final five or so inches to the tall side of average. Because of this, his arms and legs are still just a little too long and gangly for him, something he fights against fairly well but which occasionally trips him up.
His skin is fairly pale, but certainly looks paler than it is for the fact he’s got such dark eyes and hair. In the past year, he’s been made to keep his hair fairly well cropped, short enough that the very faint natural wave it gets as it lengthens can’t be well-seen. Also in the past year, his typical outfit has been updated from the slightly frayed style he used to wear in his childhood to much cleaner lines. He wears clothes he clearly didn’t pick out for himself—usually smart slacks and a neat shirt, often which he’s just shy of growing out of.
Character PB: Skandar Keynes
Writing sample: Aleksei stands in front of the mirror over the sink, fingers moving slowly and deliberately with the knot of his tie. True, he’s been wearing one for years, but now he’s meant to be making a different knot. Different folding of the same fabric.
This is the life he’s walking into, Holló’s told him. This is the mark of a man, rather than the boy who had come to this school.
He stares at the knot a moment, then untucks the tie carefully. It’s a new tie, and the fabric slips soft and pleasant over his fingers while he winds it again around his own neck. Tie it loose first; make certain everything is lined up exactly right. Then pull. Make the noose tight.
He pauses a moment with the knot still low and loose away from his neck. Studies his own eyes, the line of his own jaw; the softness of his own throat compared to the rough skin of his own hands. It takes a deep, purposeful breath to tighten the tie satisfactorily.
Why this Suit? Because why… what… who… how but be a Spade. How. I can’t… no. It. Spades.
How did you hear about us? Once there were dinosaurs.
Characters played: Eileen (A♣), Cadogan (J♦), Evan (4♣), Chives (5♠), Cynric (J), Rita (9♥)
Character Name: Aleksei Volkov
Age: 16 (July 1, 1997)
Suit/Rank: 2♠
History: Aleksei was born in Budapest, Hungary to a single mother, Katerina Volkov, and handed off almost immediately to his maternal grandparents in Karcag. From the beginning it was clear that Nagyanyja and Nagyapa Volkov would be the ones raising the boy. They didn’t see it as much of a hardship, and for the most part, Aleksei was raised in both stability and affection in their little corner of the world, either bundled on his grandmother’s hip out to the fields or tumbling around in his grandfather’s shop. Now and then, his mother appeared with an influx of cash and a distant sort of affection. She was a faint constant in his life, always half-expected and never much missed if she didn’t appear regularly.
Starting school brought on the proper revelation that he didn’t have a father—that even the other little boys being raised by grandparents had a picture, a name; a ghost of a man. His grandparents yielded nothing under questioning, having never met the man. His mother would pet his hair and tell him he would learn when he was older. The question mark stuck like a thorn in an otherwise pleasant childhood, the one piece of himself he could never quite put into place with everything else.
It became something of a catchall excuse for him. If he acted out in school—and the fighting never got overly serious; they always got caught long before that—he learned to set his eyes to watering and murmur that he hadn’t been taught well how to be a young man. If candy he hadn’t paid for found its way into his pocket or another boy’s answers found their way onto his test, he concocted elaborate tales of following in the footsteps of a man who had clearly been a thief, the way it was obviously compulsively carried in his son’s blood.
On his thirteenth birthday, his mother sat him down for a disappointingly brief conversation. She worked, she explained, with lots of people from all over the world (although what she worked doing wasn’t entirely clear). His father had been one of them—a colleague she had known for a week, slept with approximately nine months before Aleksei’s birth, whose face she had recalled firmly only when the boy started to grow toward a young man with a shadow of resemblance. There was no name, and there never would be.
The half-imagined figure, almost as permanent as his actual physical mother, vanished suddenly. It left a gap in his heart—and that gap made him realize what a gap lacking a mother who stuck around also left.
At fourteen, his grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a burden to scrape together the money, but Aleksei was sent to boarding school in a half-misguided attempt to teach him independence. The scuffles took an uptick in severity, but they also began to be more artfully cleaned up, leave less of a trail. At fifteen, he received the call that his grandmother had passed as well. It was time for a change.
Luckily for him, a benefactor had taken interest in the boy. Arrangements were made for him to stay at the school more permanently; money was provided for survival on holidays. Books above the grade level began appearing in his room.
Then came the books on combat tactics
By the time the boy was sixteen, he was deemed ready. The benefactor stepped forward—a professor who had known, amazingly, both his parents. He told Aleksei quietly of a place where men were ranked, filed, honed into tools. Where wayward souls could go to fill the missing pieces other people had left in their lives. Where, in fact, a piece of his life had vanished off to, sixteen years ago.
The next morning, Aleksei Volkov set foot in the Spade Castle, ready to find his father.
Personality: In most ways, Aleksei is an incredibly typical young man. He can maintain himself pleasantly enough when he makes the effort. When left to his own devices, he tends to slouch, to roll his eyes and line everything with sarcasm. When asked to present—when called on to perform—he stands exactingly and jumps exactly on time.
Generally, he floats somewhere toward optimistic, in spite of the last few years. He was raised with quite a strong sense of self-esteem and the general quiet belief that there’s good in the world to balance out the bad. There also wasn’t nearly enough time in his emotional education put into explaining that there are absolutely people in the world whose only intention is to break other people down into nothing.
The quality which best defines him for the moment, however, is his malleability. Aleksei very much likes to make people happy. The person of the most authority he’s with will be used as a model, a template for himself. Now that he’s moved into such a closed society, guesses are this will mean him getting molded more permanently toward the sharp, standoffish form of the prototypical Spade.
Appearance: At sixteen, Aleksei has already begun shooting up toward close to his adult height, and is continuing to grow in awkward spurts. Over the next year, he’ll likely be shooting up the final five or so inches to the tall side of average. Because of this, his arms and legs are still just a little too long and gangly for him, something he fights against fairly well but which occasionally trips him up.
His skin is fairly pale, but certainly looks paler than it is for the fact he’s got such dark eyes and hair. In the past year, he’s been made to keep his hair fairly well cropped, short enough that the very faint natural wave it gets as it lengthens can’t be well-seen. Also in the past year, his typical outfit has been updated from the slightly frayed style he used to wear in his childhood to much cleaner lines. He wears clothes he clearly didn’t pick out for himself—usually smart slacks and a neat shirt, often which he’s just shy of growing out of.
Character PB: Skandar Keynes
Writing sample: Aleksei stands in front of the mirror over the sink, fingers moving slowly and deliberately with the knot of his tie. True, he’s been wearing one for years, but now he’s meant to be making a different knot. Different folding of the same fabric.
This is the life he’s walking into, Holló’s told him. This is the mark of a man, rather than the boy who had come to this school.
He stares at the knot a moment, then untucks the tie carefully. It’s a new tie, and the fabric slips soft and pleasant over his fingers while he winds it again around his own neck. Tie it loose first; make certain everything is lined up exactly right. Then pull. Make the noose tight.
He pauses a moment with the knot still low and loose away from his neck. Studies his own eyes, the line of his own jaw; the softness of his own throat compared to the rough skin of his own hands. It takes a deep, purposeful breath to tighten the tie satisfactorily.
Why this Suit? Because why… what… who… how but be a Spade. How. I can’t… no. It. Spades.
How did you hear about us? Once there were dinosaurs.
