InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I've slept so long without you"

gabriel will boss your mob (someday). (nextofkin) wrote,
@ 2009-03-25 23:35:00

APPLICATION;

	T H E · C H A R A C T E R.
	full name;	Gabriel Marcus Lombardi.
	nickname(s)/alias(es);	Gabe.
	age & d.o.b;	27 / 21 June 2181.
	occupation;	Officially an overseer of The Levare del Sole, but he has been raised as the next in line for the Oleander crime family.
	appearance;	With Gabriel's pretension and vanity taken into account, he is doused in the waters of the privileged elite, looking less of what one would expect the heir of a criminal organization to look like. Always well-dressed and well-groomed, he makes an effort to always look his best, regardless of the situation, and without a doubt, he looks down on those who opt to "slum it," neglecting what he feels to be very important hygiene. His height is average, his hair and eyes are dark, and his skin is tanned with the telltale coloring of his mother's Mexican heritage; hair is kept neatly trimmed -- wispy, rather than slicked, and his posture is straight and exacted. He finds slouching to be both uncomfortable and unaesthetically appealing, so ever since he was small, he gave his parents little trouble when it came to the way he opted to present himself. It is only beneath the refined manner and expensive clothing that one finds the telltale signs of his ties with the world of organized crime. The first of his tattoos was etched when he was a young teenager: a graceful oleander resting on the back of his left shoulder. As he aged and became more involved in his father's work as the boss of the Oleander family, markings were added to the mix; in his early twenties, an intricate (and expensive) design of oleanders was tattooed onto the right side of his back, stretching over his shoulder blade with the stems and flowers trailing to wrap around his right arm, ending about halfway to the elbow.
	personality;	Raised as the only son (and only child, at that) of the Oleander crime family's current boss, Gabriel has spent his life at the height of wealth and privilege. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, treasured and trained by his parents, he has never thought for a moment that he is deserving of anything less than the best. Such power can be dangerous to the development of a growing child, however, and ultimately detrimental to the resulting adult. He is vain and haughty, overly concerned with appearances and overly critical of others. A rather snooty superiority complex developed in his manner, internally raising him above the average civilian and the enemy families, alike. As far as he's concerned, he and the Oleander family as a whole have every right in the world to step on whoever the need to in order to get where they need to go. He who grabs, receives. Despite the feeling of superiority, the threat of such outsiders is not canceled out. Gabriel is a distrustful individual by nature -- critical, attuned to detail, skeptical -- and those outside of the tight-knit Oleander family are to be held at an arm's length. His father encouraged in him the practice of looking for any weakness to grapple onto and use to his own advantage, to remain vigilant and sharp in his dealings. There is a vague air of suspicion that contrasts rather sharply to the closer sense of trust allowed to those within his own group, and he feels that it is an entirely necessary distinction. Across situations, however, appearances are very important in Gabriel's mind whether it is to friend or foe. He is eager, even enthusiastic to do well -- though his motivation stems more from the desire to appear competent and to save face in front of others, rather than a drive for personal fulfillment and growth. He puts his best effort into the things he does and works to look as if he is in control of a situation, whether or not it is a reality; he is far more likely to pretend he knows exactly what he is doing than to admit he's wrong or struggling. Proud and stubborn, he hates the idea of losing face. Pressure might surround his determination to be successful, but despite this internal fight, he is not abnormally high-strung. He becomes stressed in stressful situations, but he keeps enough of a head on his shoulders to at least muddle through and make the best with what he can manage, tactfully using his subordinates however he most effectively can. It is not with malice or even dismissal in their cases, however -- rather, that's simply the way it works when one has subordinates. They are they as a support system, just as he is a support for his own father. Regarding the true family business, he is less experienced than others in the group, but he fights for it, and even if it takes an element of floundering, he is far too stubborn to roll over and let the situation flop beyond his furthest reach. A hot temper leaves him prone to the occasional temper tantrum when things don't go according to his desired plan -- the feeling of entitlement and availability of money has always led him to believe things ought to go his way -- but his demeanor on the whole is friendly, to a degree...if you are a part of the Oleander family. There is no perpetual scowl on his face, but he doesn't like fraternizing with people outside of the comfort zone of their family, and he does not see the need to lower himself to the base level of friendliness. Civility, yes, but not necessarily friendliness. Rounded off with a good dose of pretension, Gabriel prides himself on a refined set of tastes and behaviors (barring the tantrums, though he glazing over those entirely), and he lives a very cultured life. In the sense of society, he has always been very wealthy, and in the sense of society, he is an overseer of the Levare del Sole, a museum of fine art in the uptown district that the Oleander group controls. His tastes are high quality, and his preferences are materialistic, once again believing show to be an important aspect of a person or object's worth.
	biography;	From the very beginning, Gabriel's life was destined to be set neatly before him, trimmed with fine clothes and fine belongings -- most anything his heart could possibly desire. His mother -- born Ana Espinoza -- was an exotically beautiful artist (with equally beautiful paintings) who, despite her tender age of 21, was a budding talent in the uptown district of New Alexandria. Competition in the always flourishing district was difficult for someone so unestablished, but her passion caught the eye of Marcus Lombardi, the hard-nosed but charming boss of the Oleander crime family. Pulling those from the outside was always a risk, but rather than bending to the uncertainties of the 'family,' he pursued her, lavishing her with financial backing and cool affection. Like a moth to the flame, she was reeled in by the charms of such seemingly endless wealth and the doting of a handsome man several years her senior. In 2179, they were married. Initially, the subject of the Oleanders was delicately avoided. A silent understanding existed between them that those he considered his brothers were not brothers in the traditional sense, but for some time, she did not ask, and he did not tell. Steadily she was incorporated to the system, integrated with the other wives and women in the group, securing her firmly and unbreakably to the tight-knit world of the Oleanders. The conversation was unspoken, understood -- and the funds of this new lifestyle allowed her to continue her life as an increasingly prominent painter. The following year, however, the couple's life took yet another significant turn with the birth of their first (and would be only) child, Gabriel Marcus Lombardi -- a treasured heir to their life and fortune, and he was treated as such. Gabriel was a demanding child, volatilely passionate but selectively careful once he moved on from his wailing infancy into his more inquisitive childhood. There were other children in "the family" to play with, but he spent a great deal of time in the presence of his parents. Ana was not among the prim and pretentious wealthy women who wanted a nanny to raise her child: she wanted to help guide him into his own self-discovery, and likewise, Marcus wished to create from the scratchwork of Gabriel (still a young child) the next man in line for the Oleander family. There was a degree of tension as to what would be expected of their baby in his adulthood, and Gabriel's mother found it somewhat difficult to impress upon her child a life he had not yet been given the chance to choose, but the boss of the Oleanders was not looking for approval so much as he was letting her in on how things would ultimately play out. Tensions of marriage clashed and combined with tensions of new parenthood, but silence remained. Ana parented and painted; Marcus parented and ran an underground family of crime; Gabriel, in the meantime, grew to be terribly and cluelessly spoiled. When the time came for Gabriel to enter school, he was enrolled in the finest of institutions. Most of the children he had spent his days with were other children of people in the Oleanders, and despite the financial standing of those around him, he felt the beginnings of what would become a far more intense distrust of those who were not among "his own." His emotions had always been quick and powerful, but rather than allowing them to fashion him into a fool, his father carefully shaped them skillfully to a tool -- with the strength of passion and determination but the head on his shoulders to maintain self-control, he would lack the apathy of the mellow and lack the carelessness of the emotional while reaping the benefits of each. Developing the self-control was difficult, initially, but as Gabriel became more mindful of himself, he and his father felt more and more as though they shared a secret that the world was not privy to. He knew that he could not be around his father always; the man was very busy and not always doing things that a young child ought to be exposed to, but he quietly cherished the attention and the excitement of his father's Other World. There were children not much older than him who sought refuge in the life they could find among the Oleanders, and while he took on no physical contribution to the effort until he was a fair deal older, he was groomed all along by his father: favored, taught, and toughened, when necessary. He flurried between the indulgences of his mother and tough but idolized attentions of his father. When Gabriel was thirteen years old, he received the first of his tattoos: an oleander flower marked delicately into the skin on the back of his left shoulder. The marking was a method of self-identification and a matter of pride in both his family and his "extended family" alike, as well as an acceptance of the responsibility that was to come. He was a teenager, shifting him that much closer to being a man -- at least in his own mind and the mind of his father. Although his mother was silently uncomfortable with the way her only child was being integrated into the world of crime when he was still such a child, she recognized that Gabriel did not seem in the least bit unhappy about the prospect. It was not what she was used to, but the more the years past, the more his mother came to accept that Gabriel wanted, even if it had not necessarily been a voluntary choice from the beginning. With this acceptance came the support she had struggled with for thirteen years. Growing into his teenage years, Gabriel began to "help" his father with decisions (though in the mind of Marcus Lombardi, it was more of an exercise to gauge Gabriel's thought processes and progress than any need or desire for a teenager's help, son or not), and he while he was not sent out to assassinate or to keep watch, he kept close as his father increasingly useful second-in-command. He did little on his own without his father's watchful (and critical) gaze, but Gabriel did not mind, feeling that spread before him was plenty to learn. There was an air of self-entitlement that came along with a teenage boy who knew (or at least felt) his spot in the line to the top was a flawless guarantee, and had he liked his comrades less, he might have arrogantly rubbed it in their faces on an unbearable basis. The Oleanders were a family of tight-knit closeness, however, and the respect for those around him nullified his natural inclination toward excessive superiority. At least for the most part. And at least for the Oleanders. He was friendly to those he trusted, observantly skeptical of those outside the confines of his world. Anyone could be an enemy, he had learned. Everyone had a weakness, he had learned. When it came time for graduation, Gabriel graduated with the honors of a hard worker (despite the idleness one might expect of someone so utterly concerned with vanity), and he pursed a degree in business management and art throughout his university years. He had ambitions to settle his "day job" in the hallowed halls of the Levare del Sole in his pursuit of both becoming intimately aware of the headquarters of the Oleanders operations and finding a way to enjoy the surroundings of some of the finest pieces of artwork from Europe and the world as a whole. Despite his choice to follow his father's occupational path, he inherited his mother's love for beauty and her taste in art. It was something that his father loved in his mother, and something Gabriel could truly understand. Once again graduating with a respectable academic record, Gabriel was quick to join the running of the art museum, raising steadily (but notably swiftly) to an overseer position, where he has remained as a respectable, art-appreciating citizen in the bounding daylight, and his father's second-in-command in the hushed shadows.
	T H E · O O C.
	name/alias;	Chels.
	age;	Twenty.
	AIM & e-mail;	stealyourhorcrux//stealyourhorcrux@gmail.com.
	layout credit;	girdles @ livejournal. Background found at squidfingers.
	PB;	Gael Garcia Bernal.