Post by Lovino on Oct 16, 2012 17:27:49 GMT -5
Player Name: Honestly, you can call me just about anything. If it's related to my character I'll know to respond, if it's anything close to either Rennskye or Ember I'll also be likely to catch your drift. So yeah. Anything from Lovi/Lovikins to Ember to "Hey you with the face" works. Call me what you will.
Character: Il Mezzogiorno/Italia del Sud/South Italy/Republica Italia/Italia Romano formerly the Kingdom of Sicily, formerly the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, formally Sicily, formerly a lot of other things, given that countries are really freaking old and Lovino's been a lot of things over the centuries. But yeah. South Italy.
Name: Lovino Delmazio Giovanni Vargas
Age: Twenty-three
Affiliation: The Axis, (if only by extension from his little brother)
Occupation and/or Rank: Ships chef, complaint box (except that the complaints come from him, instead of going to him), professional layabout, overprotective and generally excessively cranky older brother.
Birthplace: Venice SC674, an Italian space colony hovering near Saturn (I'd make him from something Sicily related or Nueva Roma but Imma fit in with Feli's, since that makes sense to me.)
Appearance:
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7agafkVUR1ry7t1zo3_400.jpg
The most noticeable thing about Lovino is probably the large, gravity-defying curl that sprouts from nearly the centre of his head (in fact, it's actually just to the right of centre, not that anyone really cares to pay attention to that, or much of anything with him, really, but we'll get to that later). Beyond that, though Lovino isn't that remarkable. He isn't particularly tall or particularly short, and while he's not wide he's not all too thin either. Not skin-and-bones thin, anyway, a bit scrawny, perhaps, but not enough to cause notice. In fact he's entirely unremarkable, if not for his firy temper. At a glance he's not much. Short, brown hair, brown-green eyes and tanned olive skin. He's lean and wiry, 'little scrapper' style.
Lovino tries to look cool and suave, but it doesn't really work out well for him. He's too awkwardly plain to look impressive, even when he gets all put up in suits and the like. He does dress nice, but the effect is generally ruined because he leaves his clothes lying around on the floor or stuffed away so they get wrinkled, so while he might be wearing nice slacks, they don’t look nice after the third wear or so. He's particularly fond of deep reds as far as shirts go, that or a nice clean white, and usually wears slacks and a sports coat, even for just being around the ship. He was particularly taken with the idea of the American Gangster after watching some old-age flicks and films and he never really left the twenties in terms of dress. He likes suits, he has a vast collection of waist coats, and he's thoroughly convinced that the fedora will never go out of style. Now if he'd just bother to fold them nicely when he was done rather then letting them pile up… On a side note, Lovino looks far better in green (it brings out the green hints in his eyes, which are rightfully brown but can seem to switch between the two if you look closely enough thanks to their hazel nature) then the reds he tends to gravitate towards. Alas.
This only kind of falls into appearance, but his hands are constantly shaking - it's from a case of (space!) chorea he was born with that never fully went away (because Space Chorea is much cooler then just plain chorea) , and he sometimes can have random muscle spasms - so you'll see things like his lip quivering a lot. It's not because he's nervous or scared, it's a condition. Really (well, okay, sometimes it's because he's nervous or scared).
Personality: Lovino is known for his quick temper and sharp tongue, and for good reason. He's an irritable little soul, easily enflamed and seemingly always angry. Bitter and jealous from a lifetime spent in second place, Lovino was born first but not properly (in his opinion) treated to the spoils that should have come with that, and it's left him with a mighty inferiority complex. Lovino has long played second fiddle to his more talented other half, and while he started out with a deep admiration for the other ("look what my little brother can do! I can't even do that, he's so talented-!") it quickly turned into a fierce jealousy that he's never gotten over. While he still loves Feliciano dearly (a fierce affection bordering on a brother-complex), he can't help but be incredibly jealous of what Feliciano has, what he can do, how people see him. The result is a nice mix of being obsessively protective and possessive of the other, and violently bitter of Feliciano's every success.
Because of that obsessive protectiveness, Lovino made a point (in their not-quite-younger-but-definitely-not-older years) to make sure Feliciano didn't learn about any of the darker bits of their Grandfather's lifestyle. While he can be incredibly lazy when he wants to be, and even when he doesn't, he still tries to deal with the sticker situations before Feliciano, as a general rule. After all, what else are older brothers for? For making sure the little ones turn out all right, especially when the first born is as much of a screw up as Lovi turned out to be. And while he takes on this role fairly easily (and honestly without much complaint, despite how much of a whiner he can be) it's given him further reason to resent Feliciano, when he feels that as the older brother he really ought to be the one in his place. But he's not, and he's learned to accept that, if only because there's not much he can do to change it.
Lovino is incredibly religious, it's something that holds him together through the years. Lovino's faith is incredibly important to him, in a world where (given his outlook) just about everything's full of shit (shit ship, shit captain, shit food, shit fate, shit bro- you get the point) it's one of the few things he's found that he's seen as truly good. Even with some of the god awful things that have happened in direct relation to it. Religion is also the only thing he's had that he could always turn to, no matter the situation. God might not listen to him, but a Father always would, it was always somewhere to go to, someone to turn to, someone to listen and be there and not give up on him no matter how sure he might be that he'll be going to hell in the end. And he is certain he's going to hell - how could he not be? When you're born into the kind of work his Grandfather provided, well... He's been sinning so long that he's pretty sure he couldn't stop even if he tried, so with some things he doesn't, and with the others he feels guilty and does penance for but eventually commits again, repeat ad nausium. So he goes through fits of living incredibly piously, and relapsing into far more scandalous activities, coming out of these times with a zealous fervour for changing his behaviour, doing his penance, and getting back to God, though it never really lasts.
This, of course, is for multiple reasons - most of them springing from the nature of his existence. It's hard to be prepped for inheriting the title of Don without getting blood on your hands, both figuratively and literally. That, though, he figures he could quite possibly be forgiven for, if only because it's in his nature, in his blood, and it's not like he gets particularly vindictive about the killing - not like it's… it's murder or something like that, after all. Just… tying up loose ends. And so long as he doesn't take any enjoyment from it… No, what really gets to him is that Lovino is very, very, very gay, no matter how hard he tries to get himself to feel otherwise. Now, according to research it's very common for people to be at least somewhat bisexual, if not completely so, and Lovino's pretty sure he could have lived with himself if he got saddled with either of those. But no. He's tried to fall for women rather then men, he really has (a long habit that has him being far kinder to the 'fairer sex' then he is to those of his own, despite personal preference), but to no avail, and while he knows that loving another man isn't forbidden, acting on it is and he's not exactly good at abstinence, no matter how he tries. After all, he is of Italian lineage, and therefore built for romance, both of the heart and of a more carnal nature. So he suffers pretty heavily from Catholic Guilt, weighed around his neck far heavier then the little memento he keeps on him to remind him of his faith, though by now he's accepted that when he finally goes he'll end up in Hell, though he's not quite sure which circle is meant for him.
Lovi has a seriously violent streak, one far beyond his tendency to headbutt when annoyed and ever-filthy mouth. While it's easy to forget these days - what with the generally accepted stereotype of all Italian's being cowards persisting even in this far-flung date - it's no less true. (This, of all my characterisation choices for Lovino is perhaps the strangest without the historical context, but one that I like to keep for him in Au's as well, so please humour me while I indulge on a little historical background for my decision...Back when Lovino was the representation of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies he had quite a hunger for territory - it didn't help when Cesar Borgia came along - and he never really lost it, it's just grown nearly impossible for him to act on such. Lovino's lived most of his life with little to no control, being passed around from country to country to belong to them, so when he gets it he tends to clamp on rather violently. It's a joke in Europe that while most European countries change leaders on a regular basis an Italian leader will try and stay in power until the day they rot away, and this certainly applies to Lovino - when he has something he clings to it with everything he has, and hates the idea of letting things go, especially control, so it's a better idea not to let him have it at all. This largely comes from the influence of leaders like Cesar Borgia, who would ruthlessly try to eliminate the leaders of other city-states so that he could control more of Italia for longer.)
Lovino's a hoarder. He doesn't like giving things back - in fact he hates the very idea of giving anything up. So his room tends to be filled with things he's collected (or stolen, another bad habit) over the years. A closet that might once have been spacious may now prove a death trap to the unwary because he's just got so much crap crammed in everywhere that he refuses to get rid of. It's quite possible to get lost in the labyrinth of junk he keeps around - even in the small quarters of a ships bunker.
He's not, contrary to popular belief, racist, however he may seem to be. In fact, he hates everyone equally. It's not any one group specifically, it's just everyone all at once. He's a sour person, and he gives every stranger and equal dose of dislike. Of course, there certain people - coughLudwigcough - who he tends to lash out at verbally more than others, but that's more of an individual hate then anything against their people (after all, we can hold things against people that aren't just their race). That and anyone who takes up Feliciano's time is stealing his brother from him, and given that Feliciano is the only one that's actually obligated to notice and care about Lovino to some extent he doesn’t take kindly to having the other taken from him.
While Lovino can be very volatile and angry, there are some things that he refuses to be his angry little self around. He's an avid farmer and gardener (well, in so far as one can be in terms of teraforming plants and growing them under heat lamps in deep space), and a firm believer that talking to one's plants helps them to grow, so he refuses to shout when he's in his 'garden' (okay, so it's a collection of wide-tray terracotta pots). He keeps himself calm and will only talk kindly around his plants, and regularly converses with them, even though they never answer him back.
AU History: **PLEASE NOTE: This has been tailored to fit the existing histories of Feliciano Vargas and Romulus Vargas, however if either would like to propose a change/don't like the way I've set something up please shoot me a pm (or an e-mail, I don't mind letting people have that if you want it, it's the most reliable way to contact me anyway) and we can talk!**
The older of two brothers, Lovino was born into a family, as well as into less-than-legal (but nicely profitable) family business, which translated into two things… the inevitable wealth that came from being the grandchild of a Don, and the inevitable upbringing into said less-than-legal family, and training in the trade that came with such a title. The first led Lovino to have expensive tastes from an early age and a bad habit of taking the luxuries provided for granted. Not just in clothes (for he has long had a penchant for nice clothes, and a tendency to treat them as far cheaper then they truly were), but in food. Real food, earth-imported or asteroid grown rather than lab-grade mass produced goods. It has since led to incredibly picky tastes, and a nigh-on obsessive love of tomatoes, but that's besides the point. Said point being that he was a rather spoiled child before his induction into the family business.
But before we can get into all of that, there was another major factor in Lovino's life that greatly influenced his upbringing and quite a bit of his personal and emotional development. And that factor came in the form of a small, wriggling (and occasionally crying) baby brother - Feliciano. Feliciano was to be (and still is) perhaps the biggest influence on Lovino's life. From his actions, through his instincts, all the way back up into the thoughts (and often pure emotional responses) that cause them chances are that you'll find Feliciano at the root (provided you're willing to dig deep enough). When he first met Feliciano, shockingly enough, Lovino didn't experience the typical feelings of resentment and replacement that most first-borns have when gaining a sibling. No, those would come later. At first, in fact, Lovino found himself delighted by his new brother. He marvelled at Feliciano's tiny fingers and toes, delighted in the gurgling laughs that babes are known for, and generally adored his younger brother through his youngest years. Resentment didn't set in until later, when he saw how much Feliciano was favoured by their shared grandfather, how much more gifted then himself Feliciano was, how much more liked he was. Unfortunately, when the resentment finally did begin to grow in Lovino's heart, it did so with a vengeance. Lovino grew extremely jealous of his brother - his brother who was pampered and loved and generally far more liked then Lovi himself (which, all things considered, was rather understandable given Lovino's temperament). It simply wasn't fair to Lovino's mind - not fair that he would learn the dirty work, how to fire a weapon, how to work within the family business, how to deal with all the nitty gritty parts that came with being the grandson of a relatively well known Don. That he was to learn the inner workings of a decidedly less than legal family profession while his brother got to keep on learning about the arts both seemed to Lovino utterly unfair (after all, why shouldn't he have the right to learn such an innocent, untainted line of life? Why couldn't he get to learn to sing and paint and follow whatever path his passion decided to take? Why was it his lot to learn how to follow along a path pre-paved to a set destination?) and utterly sensible - these things should stay in the family, and Feliciano would be a terrible crime lord. Lovino, however, might make a passable one, maybe even a decent one. Add to that the fact that Feliciano was naïve and innocent and really ought to have his childish ideals preserved and it really was the best decision - but that didn't mean he had to like it!
…and Lovino did wish to preserve all of Feliciano's best qualities. For all that he'll complain about Feliciano till your ears wear out from listening to him, he loves his brother, perhaps more dearly then anything or anyone else. Certainly more than he loves himself (though that's not saying much, Lovino doesn't tend to think very highly of himself at all). He is allowed to call Feliciano stupid, to pick on him and beat him up and generally act as cruel as his moods demand, but no one else is. That's an older brother's special privilege, and for all the shit he may give Feli he'll not stand for anyone else doing so (provided, in all but the most dire cases, that he need not risk actually getting harmed standing up for him). With such a mindset (and a general disregard for doing what he was told and a laziness that had him not caring if he shirked duties for long periods at a time) Lovino turned himself into a (albeit really loud, really annoying, really pissy) second shadow for Feliciano. He made a habit of knowing where his brother was going and why …and following along as well, though he'd bitch and whine for hours about what a task it was to accompany his brother anywhere (and everywhere, even when not invited). Which would be about exactly how he got himself stuck on "this goddamned shithole that bastard calls a ship." Like hell was he going to let Feliciano go off on that death trap by himself, and given that even those with no sense of taste (coughGermanscough) need to eat, he worked his way into the position of chef the Axis. A position in which he seems determined to stay, at least until Feliciano decides to go. At least he's a good cook?
Equipment: Anything within reach that he can throw could probably go under here - he doesn't carry them with him always, naturally, but still. Anything from that knife he was just using to chop vegetables to his shoe can and will be used as a projectile if needed. Especially if you come into his kitchen uninvited. Aside from that, he's not so stupid that he goes around completely unarmed - he usually carries a Beretta FS92 (as seen here www.crazywheelies.com/media/beretta%2092.jpg chosen mostly for looks given that the writer knows nothing about guns, apparently it's a semi-automatic?). Yes, it's a bit antiquated, given that it was manufactured back in 2012, but classics are classy according to Lovino, and a bullet is a bullet, whether it was made ages ago or now it'll still hurt to get shot by one. He keeps a more modern gun in his room rather then on hand, since the Beretta is more for show then anything else. He's also never seen without his crucifix. Other then that, well, unless his bad temper and sharp tongue count… he's got his name, and whatever weight Vargas still carries.
Any other info: As long as I'm cooking for you bastards here there will be NO potatoes with meals unless you find a way to store, cook, and eat them in YOUR rooms, I'm not touching no germanic bullshit food! We'll have proper sea food, pizza, and pasta - and it'll be with real noodles, none of that dehydrated glucose crap!
Edit: forgot his crucifix, put it in under equipment.
Character: Il Mezzogiorno/Italia del Sud/South Italy/Republica Italia/Italia Romano formerly the Kingdom of Sicily, formerly the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, formally Sicily, formerly a lot of other things, given that countries are really freaking old and Lovino's been a lot of things over the centuries. But yeah. South Italy.
Name: Lovino Delmazio Giovanni Vargas
Age: Twenty-three
Affiliation: The Axis, (if only by extension from his little brother)
Occupation and/or Rank: Ships chef, complaint box (except that the complaints come from him, instead of going to him), professional layabout, overprotective and generally excessively cranky older brother.
Birthplace: Venice SC674, an Italian space colony hovering near Saturn (I'd make him from something Sicily related or Nueva Roma but Imma fit in with Feli's, since that makes sense to me.)
Appearance:
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7agafkVUR1ry7t1zo3_400.jpg
The most noticeable thing about Lovino is probably the large, gravity-defying curl that sprouts from nearly the centre of his head (in fact, it's actually just to the right of centre, not that anyone really cares to pay attention to that, or much of anything with him, really, but we'll get to that later). Beyond that, though Lovino isn't that remarkable. He isn't particularly tall or particularly short, and while he's not wide he's not all too thin either. Not skin-and-bones thin, anyway, a bit scrawny, perhaps, but not enough to cause notice. In fact he's entirely unremarkable, if not for his firy temper. At a glance he's not much. Short, brown hair, brown-green eyes and tanned olive skin. He's lean and wiry, 'little scrapper' style.
Lovino tries to look cool and suave, but it doesn't really work out well for him. He's too awkwardly plain to look impressive, even when he gets all put up in suits and the like. He does dress nice, but the effect is generally ruined because he leaves his clothes lying around on the floor or stuffed away so they get wrinkled, so while he might be wearing nice slacks, they don’t look nice after the third wear or so. He's particularly fond of deep reds as far as shirts go, that or a nice clean white, and usually wears slacks and a sports coat, even for just being around the ship. He was particularly taken with the idea of the American Gangster after watching some old-age flicks and films and he never really left the twenties in terms of dress. He likes suits, he has a vast collection of waist coats, and he's thoroughly convinced that the fedora will never go out of style. Now if he'd just bother to fold them nicely when he was done rather then letting them pile up… On a side note, Lovino looks far better in green (it brings out the green hints in his eyes, which are rightfully brown but can seem to switch between the two if you look closely enough thanks to their hazel nature) then the reds he tends to gravitate towards. Alas.
This only kind of falls into appearance, but his hands are constantly shaking - it's from a case of (space!) chorea he was born with that never fully went away (because Space Chorea is much cooler then just plain chorea) , and he sometimes can have random muscle spasms - so you'll see things like his lip quivering a lot. It's not because he's nervous or scared, it's a condition. Really (well, okay, sometimes it's because he's nervous or scared).
Personality: Lovino is known for his quick temper and sharp tongue, and for good reason. He's an irritable little soul, easily enflamed and seemingly always angry. Bitter and jealous from a lifetime spent in second place, Lovino was born first but not properly (in his opinion) treated to the spoils that should have come with that, and it's left him with a mighty inferiority complex. Lovino has long played second fiddle to his more talented other half, and while he started out with a deep admiration for the other ("look what my little brother can do! I can't even do that, he's so talented-!") it quickly turned into a fierce jealousy that he's never gotten over. While he still loves Feliciano dearly (a fierce affection bordering on a brother-complex), he can't help but be incredibly jealous of what Feliciano has, what he can do, how people see him. The result is a nice mix of being obsessively protective and possessive of the other, and violently bitter of Feliciano's every success.
Because of that obsessive protectiveness, Lovino made a point (in their not-quite-younger-but-definitely-not-older years) to make sure Feliciano didn't learn about any of the darker bits of their Grandfather's lifestyle. While he can be incredibly lazy when he wants to be, and even when he doesn't, he still tries to deal with the sticker situations before Feliciano, as a general rule. After all, what else are older brothers for? For making sure the little ones turn out all right, especially when the first born is as much of a screw up as Lovi turned out to be. And while he takes on this role fairly easily (and honestly without much complaint, despite how much of a whiner he can be) it's given him further reason to resent Feliciano, when he feels that as the older brother he really ought to be the one in his place. But he's not, and he's learned to accept that, if only because there's not much he can do to change it.
Lovino is incredibly religious, it's something that holds him together through the years. Lovino's faith is incredibly important to him, in a world where (given his outlook) just about everything's full of shit (shit ship, shit captain, shit food, shit fate, shit bro- you get the point) it's one of the few things he's found that he's seen as truly good. Even with some of the god awful things that have happened in direct relation to it. Religion is also the only thing he's had that he could always turn to, no matter the situation. God might not listen to him, but a Father always would, it was always somewhere to go to, someone to turn to, someone to listen and be there and not give up on him no matter how sure he might be that he'll be going to hell in the end. And he is certain he's going to hell - how could he not be? When you're born into the kind of work his Grandfather provided, well... He's been sinning so long that he's pretty sure he couldn't stop even if he tried, so with some things he doesn't, and with the others he feels guilty and does penance for but eventually commits again, repeat ad nausium. So he goes through fits of living incredibly piously, and relapsing into far more scandalous activities, coming out of these times with a zealous fervour for changing his behaviour, doing his penance, and getting back to God, though it never really lasts.
This, of course, is for multiple reasons - most of them springing from the nature of his existence. It's hard to be prepped for inheriting the title of Don without getting blood on your hands, both figuratively and literally. That, though, he figures he could quite possibly be forgiven for, if only because it's in his nature, in his blood, and it's not like he gets particularly vindictive about the killing - not like it's… it's murder or something like that, after all. Just… tying up loose ends. And so long as he doesn't take any enjoyment from it… No, what really gets to him is that Lovino is very, very, very gay, no matter how hard he tries to get himself to feel otherwise. Now, according to research it's very common for people to be at least somewhat bisexual, if not completely so, and Lovino's pretty sure he could have lived with himself if he got saddled with either of those. But no. He's tried to fall for women rather then men, he really has (a long habit that has him being far kinder to the 'fairer sex' then he is to those of his own, despite personal preference), but to no avail, and while he knows that loving another man isn't forbidden, acting on it is and he's not exactly good at abstinence, no matter how he tries. After all, he is of Italian lineage, and therefore built for romance, both of the heart and of a more carnal nature. So he suffers pretty heavily from Catholic Guilt, weighed around his neck far heavier then the little memento he keeps on him to remind him of his faith, though by now he's accepted that when he finally goes he'll end up in Hell, though he's not quite sure which circle is meant for him.
Lovi has a seriously violent streak, one far beyond his tendency to headbutt when annoyed and ever-filthy mouth. While it's easy to forget these days - what with the generally accepted stereotype of all Italian's being cowards persisting even in this far-flung date - it's no less true. (This, of all my characterisation choices for Lovino is perhaps the strangest without the historical context, but one that I like to keep for him in Au's as well, so please humour me while I indulge on a little historical background for my decision...Back when Lovino was the representation of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies he had quite a hunger for territory - it didn't help when Cesar Borgia came along - and he never really lost it, it's just grown nearly impossible for him to act on such. Lovino's lived most of his life with little to no control, being passed around from country to country to belong to them, so when he gets it he tends to clamp on rather violently. It's a joke in Europe that while most European countries change leaders on a regular basis an Italian leader will try and stay in power until the day they rot away, and this certainly applies to Lovino - when he has something he clings to it with everything he has, and hates the idea of letting things go, especially control, so it's a better idea not to let him have it at all. This largely comes from the influence of leaders like Cesar Borgia, who would ruthlessly try to eliminate the leaders of other city-states so that he could control more of Italia for longer.)
Lovino's a hoarder. He doesn't like giving things back - in fact he hates the very idea of giving anything up. So his room tends to be filled with things he's collected (or stolen, another bad habit) over the years. A closet that might once have been spacious may now prove a death trap to the unwary because he's just got so much crap crammed in everywhere that he refuses to get rid of. It's quite possible to get lost in the labyrinth of junk he keeps around - even in the small quarters of a ships bunker.
He's not, contrary to popular belief, racist, however he may seem to be. In fact, he hates everyone equally. It's not any one group specifically, it's just everyone all at once. He's a sour person, and he gives every stranger and equal dose of dislike. Of course, there certain people - coughLudwigcough - who he tends to lash out at verbally more than others, but that's more of an individual hate then anything against their people (after all, we can hold things against people that aren't just their race). That and anyone who takes up Feliciano's time is stealing his brother from him, and given that Feliciano is the only one that's actually obligated to notice and care about Lovino to some extent he doesn’t take kindly to having the other taken from him.
While Lovino can be very volatile and angry, there are some things that he refuses to be his angry little self around. He's an avid farmer and gardener (well, in so far as one can be in terms of teraforming plants and growing them under heat lamps in deep space), and a firm believer that talking to one's plants helps them to grow, so he refuses to shout when he's in his 'garden' (okay, so it's a collection of wide-tray terracotta pots). He keeps himself calm and will only talk kindly around his plants, and regularly converses with them, even though they never answer him back.
AU History: **PLEASE NOTE: This has been tailored to fit the existing histories of Feliciano Vargas and Romulus Vargas, however if either would like to propose a change/don't like the way I've set something up please shoot me a pm (or an e-mail, I don't mind letting people have that if you want it, it's the most reliable way to contact me anyway) and we can talk!**
The older of two brothers, Lovino was born into a family, as well as into less-than-legal (but nicely profitable) family business, which translated into two things… the inevitable wealth that came from being the grandchild of a Don, and the inevitable upbringing into said less-than-legal family, and training in the trade that came with such a title. The first led Lovino to have expensive tastes from an early age and a bad habit of taking the luxuries provided for granted. Not just in clothes (for he has long had a penchant for nice clothes, and a tendency to treat them as far cheaper then they truly were), but in food. Real food, earth-imported or asteroid grown rather than lab-grade mass produced goods. It has since led to incredibly picky tastes, and a nigh-on obsessive love of tomatoes, but that's besides the point. Said point being that he was a rather spoiled child before his induction into the family business.
But before we can get into all of that, there was another major factor in Lovino's life that greatly influenced his upbringing and quite a bit of his personal and emotional development. And that factor came in the form of a small, wriggling (and occasionally crying) baby brother - Feliciano. Feliciano was to be (and still is) perhaps the biggest influence on Lovino's life. From his actions, through his instincts, all the way back up into the thoughts (and often pure emotional responses) that cause them chances are that you'll find Feliciano at the root (provided you're willing to dig deep enough). When he first met Feliciano, shockingly enough, Lovino didn't experience the typical feelings of resentment and replacement that most first-borns have when gaining a sibling. No, those would come later. At first, in fact, Lovino found himself delighted by his new brother. He marvelled at Feliciano's tiny fingers and toes, delighted in the gurgling laughs that babes are known for, and generally adored his younger brother through his youngest years. Resentment didn't set in until later, when he saw how much Feliciano was favoured by their shared grandfather, how much more gifted then himself Feliciano was, how much more liked he was. Unfortunately, when the resentment finally did begin to grow in Lovino's heart, it did so with a vengeance. Lovino grew extremely jealous of his brother - his brother who was pampered and loved and generally far more liked then Lovi himself (which, all things considered, was rather understandable given Lovino's temperament). It simply wasn't fair to Lovino's mind - not fair that he would learn the dirty work, how to fire a weapon, how to work within the family business, how to deal with all the nitty gritty parts that came with being the grandson of a relatively well known Don. That he was to learn the inner workings of a decidedly less than legal family profession while his brother got to keep on learning about the arts both seemed to Lovino utterly unfair (after all, why shouldn't he have the right to learn such an innocent, untainted line of life? Why couldn't he get to learn to sing and paint and follow whatever path his passion decided to take? Why was it his lot to learn how to follow along a path pre-paved to a set destination?) and utterly sensible - these things should stay in the family, and Feliciano would be a terrible crime lord. Lovino, however, might make a passable one, maybe even a decent one. Add to that the fact that Feliciano was naïve and innocent and really ought to have his childish ideals preserved and it really was the best decision - but that didn't mean he had to like it!
…and Lovino did wish to preserve all of Feliciano's best qualities. For all that he'll complain about Feliciano till your ears wear out from listening to him, he loves his brother, perhaps more dearly then anything or anyone else. Certainly more than he loves himself (though that's not saying much, Lovino doesn't tend to think very highly of himself at all). He is allowed to call Feliciano stupid, to pick on him and beat him up and generally act as cruel as his moods demand, but no one else is. That's an older brother's special privilege, and for all the shit he may give Feli he'll not stand for anyone else doing so (provided, in all but the most dire cases, that he need not risk actually getting harmed standing up for him). With such a mindset (and a general disregard for doing what he was told and a laziness that had him not caring if he shirked duties for long periods at a time) Lovino turned himself into a (albeit really loud, really annoying, really pissy) second shadow for Feliciano. He made a habit of knowing where his brother was going and why …and following along as well, though he'd bitch and whine for hours about what a task it was to accompany his brother anywhere (and everywhere, even when not invited). Which would be about exactly how he got himself stuck on "this goddamned shithole that bastard calls a ship." Like hell was he going to let Feliciano go off on that death trap by himself, and given that even those with no sense of taste (coughGermanscough) need to eat, he worked his way into the position of chef the Axis. A position in which he seems determined to stay, at least until Feliciano decides to go. At least he's a good cook?
Equipment: Anything within reach that he can throw could probably go under here - he doesn't carry them with him always, naturally, but still. Anything from that knife he was just using to chop vegetables to his shoe can and will be used as a projectile if needed. Especially if you come into his kitchen uninvited. Aside from that, he's not so stupid that he goes around completely unarmed - he usually carries a Beretta FS92 (as seen here www.crazywheelies.com/media/beretta%2092.jpg chosen mostly for looks given that the writer knows nothing about guns, apparently it's a semi-automatic?). Yes, it's a bit antiquated, given that it was manufactured back in 2012, but classics are classy according to Lovino, and a bullet is a bullet, whether it was made ages ago or now it'll still hurt to get shot by one. He keeps a more modern gun in his room rather then on hand, since the Beretta is more for show then anything else. He's also never seen without his crucifix. Other then that, well, unless his bad temper and sharp tongue count… he's got his name, and whatever weight Vargas still carries.
Any other info: As long as I'm cooking for you bastards here there will be NO potatoes with meals unless you find a way to store, cook, and eat them in YOUR rooms, I'm not touching no germanic bullshit food! We'll have proper sea food, pizza, and pasta - and it'll be with real noodles, none of that dehydrated glucose crap!
Edit: forgot his crucifix, put it in under equipment.