#muse;;kepler

[thedravanianhorde]

//OK IPAD IS DYING . IM GOING INTO MY DMS AND DRAFTS FINALLY but here; unfinished kepler

[thedravanianhorde]

♫ ₊ ˚. ˋ°•*⁀➷ 𝗟𝗬𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗦 : 5 lyrics from songs that remind you of your muse.

doing this meme for kepler, shocker!

EULOGY // $UICIDEBOY$

THREE AM DRINKIN' WITH THIS PISTOL IN MY LAP // SIX MEDICATIONS, GUESS THERE AIN'T NO FIXIN' THAT // IT'S THAT BROKEN MOTHERFUCKER, KNUCKLIN' 'TIL I RELAPSE // IF I DIE, THEY MIGHT CRY // 'TIL THEY INHERIT MY STACKS.

DUALITY // WE ARE PIGS (slipknot cover)

PULL ME BACK TOGETHER OR SEPARATE THE SKIN FROM BONE, // LEAVE ME ALL THE PIECES, AND THEN YOU CAN LEAVE ME ALONE // TELL ME IF THE REALITY IS BETTER THAN THE DREAM

STINKFIST // TOOL

CONSTANT OVERSTIMULATION NUMBS ME, // BUT I WOULD NOT WANT YOU ANY OTHER WAY // JUST, NOT ENOUGH, I NEED MORE // NOTHING SEEMS TO SATISFY // I SAID, I DON'T WANT IT, I JUST NEED IT // TO BREATHE, TO FEEL, TO KNOW I'M ALIVE

COMING UNDONE // KORN

CHOKE, CHOKE AGAIN, // I THOUGHT MY DEMONS WERE MY FRIENDS // PITY ME, IN THE END THEY'RE OUT TO GET ME.

IF I HAD A HEART // FEVER RAY

THIS WILL NEVER END 'CAUSE I WANT MORE, // MORE, GIVE ME MORE, GIVE ME MORE // IF I HAD A HEART I COULD LOVE YOU, // IF I HAD A VOICE I'D SING // AFTER THE NIGHT WHEN I WAKE UP, // I'LL SEE WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS.

TAGGED BY THE BEAUTIFUL @shiranken

TAGGING: YOU!!!! YOU DO IT !!

[thedravanianhorde]

JUST, IT'S NOT ENOUGH, I NEED MORE,

NOTHING SEEMS TO SATISFY.

( ft kenshin over at @adrotans )

[thedravanianhorde]

//replies tmrw... unfinished kepler art tn

[thedravanianhorde]

//girl im thinking abt kepler and helene's wedding again

IDK IF IT WAS LIKE HUGE, i think it was probably pretty big in terms of cost and whatnot but like. kepler didnt have any family and at the time, being the way he is, he would NOTTTT have invited coworkers to it. he kept work and his personal life so separate that nobody from maxtac or old homies at the PD were invited. hell, i don't even think he told anyone he was GETTING married save for a superior or two and probably like. the longest standing member on his personal squad. very much a "youre in charge, gonna go get tied down this weekend" "HUH???" situation

but HELENE had family. i don't think it was her REAL family, i think it was a set of fake 'rents and probably a fake sibling, but they were there. helene had all her ""family"" and all her work friends there but kepler's side was genuinely empty.

that being said i do think she spent like 20 grand on a dress. i also think they did a honeymoon thing POTENTIALLY in somewhere like vegas at a gimmick casino. that was probably mostly for him because she just wanted the on-call masseuse.

[thedravanianhorde]

//let's have the talk about kepler and women that i've been meaning to have for ages because... much like harry du bois he really cannot put them outside of two categories. madonna and whore.

now to be perfectly clear kepler's internalized misogyny is an incredibly deliberate choice on my part. the women he's known he can count on one hand, and the women he's been CLOSE to are even less. there's a huge part of me that refuses to talk kepler's trauma on the dash, PURELY because you kind of need a stomach of steel for it, but this part i'm gonna go into because it really does fascinate me endlessly. his relationships with women are broken and internalized homophobia means his interactions with men are often incredibly charged.

tw for violence, discussions of misogyny and depictions of abuse. sexual trauma is mentioned but it is not described in detail.

i also think being too blatant about kepler's trauma sort of bastardizes the dissociation and memory aspect, because absolutely none of this is something he remembers. as far as kepler is concerned his parents just plopped him on a street corner and he just so happened to survive that. he remembers his uncle in very, very small bits and pieces - and frankly even that is up for debate, because all he really remembers is the way he used to say his name. mark. it was never marcus, it was always mark, and being called that now will set him off. he won't know why he's so angry, he won't know why he feels fucking sick, but if you call him that he's going to hurt you.

getting back to my original point here, as far as kepler is concerned he had no parents. which is of course not true; his father was just a scav and his mother was his longtime victim.

which, when youre ages 1-5 or 6, this... is a heinous combo. kepler's mother loved him very much, i think he was her reason for not just straight offing herself, but it's. that's not an existence. and kepler grew up for those first five years surrounded by violence, by a mother that would hug him but couldnt teach him to live. truly had no idea how to feed him, she didnt know how to take care of him at all. through no fault of her own she wasnt literate, she wasnt allowed to leave the building and she was, essentially... just a body. and when kepler's father finally got tired of her, got tired of her and his kid and everything else - very likely having gotten fuckin busted or had his hand smacked by someone he worked with - he killed her.

and he had kepler help cut her up into pieces.

so then you do this, right, you grow up and face more absolutely horrifying forms of abuse at the hands of your mothers brother. your uncle. because your dad paid him off and he was no peach to your mom either and has only nefarious intentions for you. and you carry it with you, this idea that you will never, ever grow up to be these men that raised you; you dont remember seeing any women in your life but there must be a reason for that.

you start watching TV in public places, you catch watson whore on someone else's TV from a balcony across from a megabuilding/some apartments. you sit on this rooftop to watch this building because the person inside uses that specific unit uses subtitles. you learn over time that every story where the guy gets the girl, he's smooth, he's a gentleman. he's nice. and when he's not very nice, when he looks at other women or calls them names it makes them feel bad; an obvious point a to point b. but weirdly enough, it sets him up to be a fairly good husband, if not Terminal Male Levels of oblivious sometimes.

it's the women that throw him. his second encounter is trying to understand them; in this movies, in these shows, theres the girl you want and the girl you dont. the girl you want (the madonna) is sweet, shes kinda funny, shes spunky but shes reserved, you know? good family. softspoken but loud when she feels the need to be. never too much one way. her counterpart, most often, is the whore. the whore is the one that tries to ruin the madonna's good image in the movie, the boyfriend thief, the prom ruiner, the blood-dumper, the second vampire slayer while the first is still alive. kepler found a quick distaste for these women.

as he got older, of course, this viewpoint became far more realistic and less cartoonish but the principle remained. kepler found every woman in night city he tried to humor to be too materialistic. ages 18-27 was career-focused besides, he didnt WANT to date. theyre distractions from what matters, distractions from his job and his really strict schedules both self-imposed and work related. the women arasaka tried to honeypot him with at first completely failed, because down to the way they are DRESSED, kepler is already starting to parse them in his mind.

it's also why he sometimes didn't know what to do with valerie. she's a machine, she's a gun, but in the right light she was also a lady. it's why he put helene on that pedestal; she was a living deity, she was a saint, and the institution of marriage to him was no fucking joke at the time. marriage is for men that can provide. marriage is for men that are serious about their women, marriage is for men with the ability to protect them and care for them, and the vows you say you have to mean with your soul. it's not a joke.

and it might not be a joke, but it's certainly the equivalent of keeping a pet in a well-done menagerie. kepler goes wildly from assigning women he doesnt care about expendable roles in his mind - whore. another body the city uses to keep beds warm, a nuisance, in my way - to putting them on a pedestal so hard he'd stick iron in his mouth if they told him to.

valerie is an interesting exception and also example. her age plays a massive factor into some of this, but man.... this rant's long enough i'll go into that later lol

[thedravanianhorde]

//i feel like i've never really gone into meaty depth about kepler's variety of issues on here somehow, but there are times where i want to crack him open like an egg for the thousandth time. cant sleep rn, so i'm turning him over like a hotdog on a stick. if i dont ramble forever i wont readmore this*

anyway when i imagine kepler as a young man in my head, he's faceless. something i harp on that is absolutely integral to his character is that he's never, ever been quite right in the head, he's always been just to the left of off. it's fun to debate with myself as to whether this is nature or nurture; the severity of the abuse he experienced physically and mentally during keystone years of being alive did not help what later happens to him nor the shit he does.

and it's funny because i've mentioned him as a teenager on here in an ask, but even then his face is like a scribble to me. and i think he wandered around feeling like this too, like a total background character - and he was. he grew up in pacifica. who would bother to save him when they have their own equally bad problems to handle? who would bother to save him that didnt want something in return? and that was fine. it really was fine, survival is survival and everyones miserable. and while it all lead up to him finding some kind of meaning in wanting to make a difference with joining the NCPD/getting tf outta dodge...

it's like the first time he felt like he EXISTED was sitting in a superior's squad car. like, full lunch break eating something and catching your reflection in the side mirror and realizing at 19/20 years old, you exist. you're a real person. you are a real person with real emotions and the first one that comes to mind is an anger so visceral you almost start laughing out loud. and it's silent in that car, save for the crinkle of sandwich wrappers, and all kepler wants to do is start laughing because he's so pissed off. over nothing. over everything. over having a face and being a real person.

and this is so jarringly upsetting he simply looks away from the mirror and pretends he never had the thought. it's a saturday night and streets will be busy, and he's on the clock. he has to be professional.

and i could talk a lot about kepler's mannerisms pre-city center, because they are VASTLY DIFFERENT from him in the maelstrom/out with the shiv. which is a given obviously but... he was so yes sir/no sir. he was military polite, he was quiet though mostly good-natured if reserved with his humor. he was not a good man - to stomach the NCPD and take the maxtac promotion after it, i feel there was things he would've had to turn a blind eye to that are likely reprehensible as hell.

i almost said he did his best to be one, but i don't know if that's true. i think he'd think so if he could remember more of those years. i dont think he did, though, and i think he was so focused on being a good machine and a good dog for his wife and militech that he didn't much care if the institutions he served were. well. what they are. he wanted to help people once. he took the most basic and direct path.

and now kepler's probably standing in the middle of the badlands somewhere hacking someone into pieces for their chrome to lowball it to a scav. which is cool, because at least when he catches his reflection in their cyberware, its seven pairs of eyes he can actually recognize.

[thedravanianhorde]

Fighting style. // For Kepler!

one word: versatile.

his having been maxtac - and not just maxtac, he wasn't just an operator, he was a lieutenant senior officer - means that he is ready and willing to meet his opponents where they are, provided they are not netrunners*. he is a brick shithouse, he can tank injuries like you wouldn't believe. which means he is absolutely never stuck in a room with someone else; YOU ARE ALWAYS STUCK IN THE ROOM WITH MARCUS KEPLER.

that being said he absolutely has preferences. he is a sniper by favor, which means that he likes to crack enemies once from afar and pack it up. he doesn't mind waiting people out, either, he'll do it for days. but he will also draw people out, and if he can't get you at distance he'll come to you.

that sandy gets OVERUSED. kepler's body can take it to a degree, but even he starts bleeding from the nose/ears semi-regularly from the amount of abuse he puts it through. when he was militech/maxtac, they helped him combat the side effects from overuse, but now that he's been severed and his original implants were removed or reprogrammed, it takes a harder toll on him. still, he uses it as often as he deems necessary, and backs up that speed with electrified gorilla fists.

his style could be closely compared to john wick's close quarters combat plays also for the more visual!

*netrunners can fry his shit pretty easily once they get past his fairly normie-amount of counterice. any netrunner worth their salt can get past it.