OOC: Infopost Flamenco
Aug. 25th, 2015 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tequila_squaredWhat's that? Another excuse to use this icon An excuse to post a lot of gifs of Miguel Angel Silvestre's face Infopost time? Don't mind if I do!
(Before I get on with it I should note there are a couple of fairly NSFW gifs in this entry. No bits, but quite a bit of skin. Also, there is discussion of a suicide attempt in the character section.)
Sense8 is a Netflix series by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, and answers the question raised by Jupiter Ascending of, "Are the Wachowskis going full fanfic, or what?" with a resounding, "Yes. Yes they are." It's the story of eight people all around the world who suddenly find themselves in agroup soulbond mentally-connected "cluster." As they're trying to work out what's going on and if they're going crazy and how this sensate business works, they're also dealing with their own problems and the new threat of a shadowy organization called BPO (the Biological Preservation Organization) that seems to be dedicated to hunting down and killing or lobotomizing sensates--even though it is headed by one in the form of the extremely creepy guy known as "Whispers."
Our heroes are:
1. Nomi Marks, a transgender lesbian hacktivist from San Francisco
2. Will Gorski, a Chicago police officer
3. Lito Rodriguez, a closeted telenovela star from Mexico City
4. Riley Blue, an Icelandic DJ living in London. (Blue is of course her stage name; her legal surname is Gunnarsdottir.)
5. Wolfgang Bogdanow, a locksmith-by-day-safecracker-by-night from Berlin
6. Capheus [surname unknown], a minibus driver and professional Jean Claude van Damme fanboy from Nairobi
7. Kala Dandekar, a pharmacist from Mumbai
8. Sun Bak, a businesswoman and underground kickboxing champion from Seoul
The show can be confusing at first because there are so many POV characters and so many individual plots going on, and the audience figures out what is going on with the sensate business at the same speed as the characters. But you guys, it's really, really fun. This is the show with the psychic global orgy!
And the psychic global singalong!
And all sorts of other psychic global shenanigans.
As stated above, Lito Rodriguez is a closeted telenovela star from Mexico City. Like the rest of his cluster, his birthday is August 8, and I'm assuming 1988 because this is that type of show. He was born at home, cancer runs in his family, and his father was a flamenco dancer from Bilbao who worked in Barcelona before coming to Mexico. That is about all we know about Lito's past. He's the only member of the cluster who doesn't get a flashback to childhood, even. Woe is me. He's very dramatic and emotional, one of the more sensitive of the sensates (ha).
Lito specializes in romantic hero action lead type roles. He's really famous. And really popular with the ladies.
And so he's super in the closet because he's afraid coming out would destroy his career and the life he's worked to build. He's seen in public with a string of starlets picked out from headshots supplied by his agent, but, as he tells anyone who tries to make a move on him for real, his heart belongs to another. That would be Hernando, his adorable art geek excellent cook boyfriend.
We should all be so lucky.
Lito's carefully ordered world is upended when his latest unwitting beard, Daniela Velasquez, crashes his apartment after a premiere, intent on getting into his bed, only, you know, Hernando's already there. Daniela, far from freaking out, finds this even better: Lito clearly needs a beard who knows the situation, she needs somewhere to crash until things cool down with her ex, and she loves gay porn. Win/win/win!
She settles in pretty well.
Like really well.
But then Daniela's ex, Joaquin, turns up and turns out to be a psycho and probably involved with a cartel, and then steals Daniela's phone, which contains photos of Lito and Hernando. To get them back, Daniela agrees to go back to Joaquin, who gives her a black eye first thing. All of this is a bridge too far from Hernando: he was willing to put up with the lying and the hiding, but not someone getting hurt for the sake of Lito's career. So he leaves Lito, who promptly has a total breakdown...
...and attempts suicide with what turns out to be a novelty lighter. It's. Yeah. Fandom tends to gloss over this in favor of the hilarity of the flip flop line, but he's in a really dark place. Luckily, after an intersection with Wolfgang's plot, he realizes that A) the fact that he's really good at lying is not necessarily bad, and B) that he has to be willing to fight to get Hernando back. So he goes to confront Joaquin and get Daniela back and quickly learns that being good at movie violence...
...does not necessarily translate to being good at real world violence.
Luckily Wolfgang has his back. That's the neat thing about being a sensate: there's always someone in your corner who's got the skill set you need. So Lito rescues Daniela and gets Hernando back, yay! And declares he doesn't care what Joaquin does with the pictures, yay! And it's all happily ever after in Lito's plot!
So why is he now willingly leaving Hernando and Daniela and coming to Fandom? Because things do not end so rosily in season one for everyone, and that has far-reaching implications for the whole cluster. In the process of rescuing Riley from a bad situation with BPO, Will looked Whispers in the eye, which means that now, by sensate rules, Whispers can see what he sees and track him anywhere in the world. In search of a solution other than 'drug him into a coma forever' Nomi read something about this island where weird things happen on the internet, and Lito, as one of the more flexibly-scheduled members of the cluster, was chosen to go check it out under the guise of 'drama teacher.'
If you think your character would have seen any of Lito's movies/recognize him, then by all means feel free to do so! He's used to it.
Dear Radio People: if you don't read any of the rest of this infopost, please read this next part, as it contains information on how Lito's perception of the world differs from what an outside observer, such as a squirrel, sees. I will do my best to note this whenever it happens, but I can't guarantee I'll always remember, so I want to explain up front, too.
There are basically two ways sensating works: visiting and sharing. I am going to say that a telepath or other such psychic would be able to pick up on what is going on and see the other sensates when they visit or share, but everyone else, not so much.
Visiting: This is when one sensate's consciousness visits another, and it's kind of like facetiming on your phone only way more so. For example: say Nomi visits Lito in his apartment. From Lito's point of view, Nomi is present and can interact with him and his environment. To an outsider, it appears that Lito is talking to thin air, and--say Nomi picks up a book on the table. Actually, it is Lito's body picking up that book. However, if Lito visits Nomi in San Francisco while his body is present in Fandom, it will seem like he's just sitting around doing nothing, or going about whatever he would be doing otherwise while kind of zoned out mentally. This is not always done on purpose; sometimes parallel experiences or thoughts can cause sensates to visit one another without meaning to.
Sensates in the same cluster can visit without having met, but they can only visit sensates in other clusters if they have looked each other in the eye. This is how Whispers hunts his own kind.
Sharing: Sensates can borrow or 'share' skills and knowledge they would not otherwise have, but only within their own cluster. Some of this is sort of ambient knowledge that is absorbed without intent through the bond--Lito now speaks several languages he wouldn't have before--but usually it's deliberate. For example: say Lito needs to pick a lock. Well, Lito can't pick a lock to save his life, but Wolfgang can, so Wolfgang shares his consciousness with Lito. As far as Lito is concerned, he has stepped back and is an outside observer watching over Wolfgang's shoulder as Wolfgang picks that lock. To anyone else, it looks like Lito just went from fumbling around with no clue what he was doing to an expert.
Also, there can sometimes be a sort of ambient sharing where one sensate will experience the emotions or pain of another, or hear or smell something they are hearing or smelling, without it being a full visitation or sharing experience. Examples: Wolfgang craving Indian food; Lito experiencing Sun's PMS.
There can also be more complex situations. We see one of these in canon when Will is breaking Riley out of the BPO facility, and needs to find the correct drug to wake her up from a semiconscious state. From Will's POV, he is supporting Riley while Kala looks for the right drug, but when we cut to an outside POV we see that Riley is leaning against nothing while Will searches the cabinets. This is because Will is visiting Riley while Kala shares with Will.
Oh, and as far as the username goes...
For information on my other characters, you can go here and here!
Aaaand I think that's about everything.
(Before I get on with it I should note there are a couple of fairly NSFW gifs in this entry. No bits, but quite a bit of skin. Also, there is discussion of a suicide attempt in the character section.)
Sense8 is a Netflix series by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, and answers the question raised by Jupiter Ascending of, "Are the Wachowskis going full fanfic, or what?" with a resounding, "Yes. Yes they are." It's the story of eight people all around the world who suddenly find themselves in a
Our heroes are:
1. Nomi Marks, a transgender lesbian hacktivist from San Francisco
2. Will Gorski, a Chicago police officer
3. Lito Rodriguez, a closeted telenovela star from Mexico City
4. Riley Blue, an Icelandic DJ living in London. (Blue is of course her stage name; her legal surname is Gunnarsdottir.)
5. Wolfgang Bogdanow, a locksmith-by-day-safecracker-by-night from Berlin
6. Capheus [surname unknown], a minibus driver and professional Jean Claude van Damme fanboy from Nairobi
7. Kala Dandekar, a pharmacist from Mumbai
8. Sun Bak, a businesswoman and underground kickboxing champion from Seoul
The show can be confusing at first because there are so many POV characters and so many individual plots going on, and the audience figures out what is going on with the sensate business at the same speed as the characters. But you guys, it's really, really fun. This is the show with the psychic global orgy!
And the psychic global singalong!
And all sorts of other psychic global shenanigans.
As stated above, Lito Rodriguez is a closeted telenovela star from Mexico City. Like the rest of his cluster, his birthday is August 8, and I'm assuming 1988 because this is that type of show. He was born at home, cancer runs in his family, and his father was a flamenco dancer from Bilbao who worked in Barcelona before coming to Mexico. That is about all we know about Lito's past. He's the only member of the cluster who doesn't get a flashback to childhood, even. Woe is me. He's very dramatic and emotional, one of the more sensitive of the sensates (ha).
Lito specializes in romantic hero action lead type roles. He's really famous. And really popular with the ladies.
And so he's super in the closet because he's afraid coming out would destroy his career and the life he's worked to build. He's seen in public with a string of starlets picked out from headshots supplied by his agent, but, as he tells anyone who tries to make a move on him for real, his heart belongs to another. That would be Hernando, his adorable art geek excellent cook boyfriend.
We should all be so lucky.
Lito's carefully ordered world is upended when his latest unwitting beard, Daniela Velasquez, crashes his apartment after a premiere, intent on getting into his bed, only, you know, Hernando's already there. Daniela, far from freaking out, finds this even better: Lito clearly needs a beard who knows the situation, she needs somewhere to crash until things cool down with her ex, and she loves gay porn. Win/win/win!
She settles in pretty well.
Like really well.
But then Daniela's ex, Joaquin, turns up and turns out to be a psycho and probably involved with a cartel, and then steals Daniela's phone, which contains photos of Lito and Hernando. To get them back, Daniela agrees to go back to Joaquin, who gives her a black eye first thing. All of this is a bridge too far from Hernando: he was willing to put up with the lying and the hiding, but not someone getting hurt for the sake of Lito's career. So he leaves Lito, who promptly has a total breakdown...
...and attempts suicide with what turns out to be a novelty lighter. It's. Yeah. Fandom tends to gloss over this in favor of the hilarity of the flip flop line, but he's in a really dark place. Luckily, after an intersection with Wolfgang's plot, he realizes that A) the fact that he's really good at lying is not necessarily bad, and B) that he has to be willing to fight to get Hernando back. So he goes to confront Joaquin and get Daniela back and quickly learns that being good at movie violence...
...does not necessarily translate to being good at real world violence.
Luckily Wolfgang has his back. That's the neat thing about being a sensate: there's always someone in your corner who's got the skill set you need. So Lito rescues Daniela and gets Hernando back, yay! And declares he doesn't care what Joaquin does with the pictures, yay! And it's all happily ever after in Lito's plot!
So why is he now willingly leaving Hernando and Daniela and coming to Fandom? Because things do not end so rosily in season one for everyone, and that has far-reaching implications for the whole cluster. In the process of rescuing Riley from a bad situation with BPO, Will looked Whispers in the eye, which means that now, by sensate rules, Whispers can see what he sees and track him anywhere in the world. In search of a solution other than 'drug him into a coma forever' Nomi read something about this island where weird things happen on the internet, and Lito, as one of the more flexibly-scheduled members of the cluster, was chosen to go check it out under the guise of 'drama teacher.'
If you think your character would have seen any of Lito's movies/recognize him, then by all means feel free to do so! He's used to it.
Dear Radio People: if you don't read any of the rest of this infopost, please read this next part, as it contains information on how Lito's perception of the world differs from what an outside observer, such as a squirrel, sees. I will do my best to note this whenever it happens, but I can't guarantee I'll always remember, so I want to explain up front, too.
There are basically two ways sensating works: visiting and sharing. I am going to say that a telepath or other such psychic would be able to pick up on what is going on and see the other sensates when they visit or share, but everyone else, not so much.
Visiting: This is when one sensate's consciousness visits another, and it's kind of like facetiming on your phone only way more so. For example: say Nomi visits Lito in his apartment. From Lito's point of view, Nomi is present and can interact with him and his environment. To an outsider, it appears that Lito is talking to thin air, and--say Nomi picks up a book on the table. Actually, it is Lito's body picking up that book. However, if Lito visits Nomi in San Francisco while his body is present in Fandom, it will seem like he's just sitting around doing nothing, or going about whatever he would be doing otherwise while kind of zoned out mentally. This is not always done on purpose; sometimes parallel experiences or thoughts can cause sensates to visit one another without meaning to.
Sensates in the same cluster can visit without having met, but they can only visit sensates in other clusters if they have looked each other in the eye. This is how Whispers hunts his own kind.
Sharing: Sensates can borrow or 'share' skills and knowledge they would not otherwise have, but only within their own cluster. Some of this is sort of ambient knowledge that is absorbed without intent through the bond--Lito now speaks several languages he wouldn't have before--but usually it's deliberate. For example: say Lito needs to pick a lock. Well, Lito can't pick a lock to save his life, but Wolfgang can, so Wolfgang shares his consciousness with Lito. As far as Lito is concerned, he has stepped back and is an outside observer watching over Wolfgang's shoulder as Wolfgang picks that lock. To anyone else, it looks like Lito just went from fumbling around with no clue what he was doing to an expert.
Also, there can sometimes be a sort of ambient sharing where one sensate will experience the emotions or pain of another, or hear or smell something they are hearing or smelling, without it being a full visitation or sharing experience. Examples: Wolfgang craving Indian food; Lito experiencing Sun's PMS.
There can also be more complex situations. We see one of these in canon when Will is breaking Riley out of the BPO facility, and needs to find the correct drug to wake her up from a semiconscious state. From Will's POV, he is supporting Riley while Kala looks for the right drug, but when we cut to an outside POV we see that Riley is leaning against nothing while Will searches the cabinets. This is because Will is visiting Riley while Kala shares with Will.
Oh, and as far as the username goes...
For information on my other characters, you can go here and here!
Aaaand I think that's about everything.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-25 02:34 pm (UTC)... yeah, that's all I've got, sorry. *slinks away*