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Entry tags:
ryslig app (spoilers for the penumbra podcast)
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Everett
Contact:
Other Characters: none!
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Juno Steel
Age: 38
Canon: The Penumbra Podcast
Canon Point: After the “Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection” arc, Season 2. Thus, Juno no longer has his cybernetic eye and has an eyepatch over his right eye.
Character Information: http://thepenumbrapodcast.wikia.com/wiki/Juno_Steel
Season 2 history hasn't been added to the wiki yet, but I'll provide a bulleted summary.
- Juno is incredibly cranky at the fact that he can't shoot straight anymore because he only has one eye. His poor shooting has cost him a few cases, and his poor mood is affecting those around him.
- Juno gets a simple case with Maia King, high profile real estate lawyer working on a case against Babbling Brook Realty which was selling apartments with the residents still in them. She says something weird is going on with her cat and he finds out that someone switched her cat for a fake cat by someone Juno dubs "The Piranha". Turns out someone put a bomb in the fake cat to try and get her off the real estate case. Juno saves her in the nick of time, but The Piranha gets away due to his poor shooting.
- Juno receives a mysterious message from Ramses O'Flaherty, a mayoral candidate who promises to do good. Ramses knows Juno seeks to "do good" in this world, and he cannot do it without his skill in shooting. He offers Juno a cybernetic eye, the THEIA Spectrum, in return for protecting him for a job. Something about Ramses is familiar, but Juno can't quite place it.
- Juno finds out that Ramses changed identities about thirty years ago. Juno has the cybernetic eye installed. He goes with Ramses to the Fortezza, a prison where "consulting criminals" are kept. Ramses is due to give a speech that day and one of the prisoners, The Proctor, has made an assassination threat against him. It is Juno's job to make sure the Proctor does not achieve her goal.
- Juno thwarts the Proctor with his friend, Mick Mercury. With her dying breath, the Proctor delivers a mysterious message for Juno to "go to the place every child calls home". Upon telling this to Ramses, he realizes that she means Polaris Park, which is basically Martian Disney World. Ramses happens to be the CEO of Northstar Entertainment, which runs the park and is basically Martian Disney.
- Juno and Rita go to Polaris Park and meet Lorenzo Vega and Yasmin Swift. Lorenzo is an engineer that created the star attraction, Andromeda and the Dragon's Peak. Yasmin is in charge of security at the park. Earlier that day, a bunch of inspectors got toasted by the ride, despite the ride not having real fire. Yasmin, Rita, and Juno go into the ride to inspect it.
- Juno finds out that Yasmin was the one who had murdered those people. Eventually, he gets a confession out of her and records it on the THEIA. After a fight and a chase, Juno corners Yasmin and inadvertently pushes her to her death. He finds out that she had been bribed to commit murder in order to pay for her child's healthcare. He is distraught by her meaningless death. He finds out that Yasmin had been given a message before she committed the murders--“Look for a woman with one ear outside the First Museum of Colonized History in Hyperion City.” Juno realizes that the woman is the Piranha.
- After waiting for a month and staking out the museum, Juno witnesses the current crooked mayor, Pilot Pereyra, meeting with the Piranha about stealing something from the museum. Juno manages to record some of the meeting, but is interrupted by a member of the HCPD--Lieutenant Loo. Juno is stunned and is brought to be interrogated, but Loo is clearly inexperienced.
- Omar Khan interrupts the session, and Juno finds out that he and Loo have been planning on catching the mayor for their corruption, but they don't know when the heist will take place. Juno manages to manipulate them into releasing him and bringing them along to intercept Pilot.
- Khan calls Juno out for bluffing and Juno's mistakes inadvertently get an innocent security guard killed by Pilot and their gang. A hostage situation takes place and Khan and Juno work to stop Pilot. Something ends up messing with the THEIA's system and Juno finds himself without one eye. They manage to rescue the hostages, but Pilot and the Piranha manage to get away with a map of the old subway system. The THEIA reactivates. After some digging, Juno pieces together what Pilot is after and calls up fellow PI Alessandra Strong to help him.
- Juno explains that Pilot is after a sort of legendary city under Mars's surface--the Free Dome, built by Erin Marshall D'Arc after she fled from the War to build a sort of sanctuary from the horrors of the galaxy. Alessandra and Juno try to infiltrate the abandoned Martian subway system while following Pilot and the Piranha, but are quickly caught. Alessandra and Juno are held captive to lead Pilot and the Piranha through any traps.
- Juno has a dream about Peter and reveals that he's apologetic and regrets leaving Peter that night. He wakes up and is dragged through several tests created by Marshall Erin D'Arc, Erin's son. Marshall wanted to create the tests to only allow people who were "worthy" into the Free Dome. Juno temporarily has all of the blood sucked out of him in the test of "Chair-ity". The THEIA takes control of his immune response to power him through it.
- The THEIA keeps regularly giving Juno feedback--the Piranha is controlling it somehow, but he can't figure out how. There's test of trust in which Juno must lead Alessandra and Pilot, but Pilot ends up having their foot sliced in the process.
- Eventually, when they reach the end of the tests, it is revealed that the Free Dome was never finished, and both Erin and Marshall suffered from radiation poisoning due to underground exposure. The Piranha shoots Pilot dead and ends up trapping Alessandra back in the subway system. She reveals that she was working for Ramses this entire time, and that Ramses had orchestrated this whole thing to further his own career. Struggling to fight against his own eye, Juno kills the Piranha and listens on the radio as Ramses is elected mayor. He wanders off into the Martian desert, exposed to all sorts of elements and radiation.
- After an hour or so, Juno gets intercepted by a large man in a brown jacket. He recognizes the man from when he had been watching him back at the museum. Jacket tells Juno that Ramses can track/control Juno through his eye, but he knows a way to remove it if he helps with a job.
- Juno reluctantly agrees and Jacket brings him to the Cerberus Province to meet Buddy Aurinko. The Cerberus Province is a ghetto, exposed to the radiation and sands of Mars. Many people end up here because they cannot afford to live anywhere else.
- Juno meets Buddy and he agrees to keep watch over a business transaction. The transaction is interrupted by a woman with a debtor's tag, and it is discovered that she is Buddy's ex-girlfriend, Vespa, presumed dead for fifteen years. Vespa fails to steal the goods, but the business partner ends up being stabbed.
- Although Buddy insists that Juno can leave now, Juno decides to accompany Buddy to negotiate for Vespa's release. Buddy gives up everything, including the goods, to buy Buddy's contract from her debtor. Vespa infiltrates the building and interrupts, convinced that Buddy is a hallucination from radiation poisoning. Juno illuminates the room to reveal that Buddy is not a hallucination. In a last attempt, Buddy desperately tells Vespa to meet by the lighthouse if she "wants to try again", and Vespa disappears.
- Back at the lighthouse, Buddy, Jacket, and Juno all wait for Vespa. Eventually, Vespa arrives in her spaceship to pick up Buddy, and the two have a tearful reunion. Juno leaves with Jacket.
- Jacket brings Juno to Hanataba, a surgery clinic in which no one knows whether or not the doctor actually exists. Because the eye is rooted in Juno's brain, it has been causing him audio hallucinations and will only root itself deeper unless removed. Jacket tells Juno that he believes he will go through some sort of spiritual journey, and must succeed at something to survive. Of course, he later adds that this has no basis in fact. Juno falls asleep as the surgery begins.
- In his subconscious, Juno meets his dead brother Benzaiten one last time. At first, he is convinced that he must solve Benzaiten's murder--however, as time goes on, it becomes clear that he has to unravel the events of the day that Sarah Steel was robbed and blamed Juno for everything.
- Juno is convinced that day that Turbo, a TV show character, came in that day and didn't steal anything. However, by spending time to pick apart the details, he uncovers his suppressed memories. Sarah had an upcoming pitch meeting that would make or break her career at Northstar Entertainment. Jack Takano, a fellow writer and family friend, came into the apartment building and made copies of Sarah's pitch. He then told Juno that he must never say what happened, and to tell them that Turbo did it. Juno then realizes that Jack was Ramses's previous identity.
- Juno comes to terms with the fact that his mother was a complex person--she was a mother who loved her children but also an evil abuser, and the two facts aren't mutually exclusive. After solving the mystery and having a heartfelt last conversation with Ben, Juno wakes up again, the cybernetic eye having been removed.
Personality:
Juno Steel and the Case of the Murderous Mask, Part 1
Detective Juno Steel is practically a walking noir trope--he’s stubborn, cynical, gets into a lot of trouble, and usually pisses people off within five minutes of first meeting him. Underneath all that, however, is a person who genuinely cares about others and their wellbeing. No matter what, Juno Steel has always strived to “do good”, to the point of him having a martyr complex. Many of his problems and otherwise “unagreeable” behavior can be traced back to his traumatic history and the relationship he had with his abusive mother, Sarah Steel.
Juno hasn’t always been doom and gloom, of course. When Juno was young, he and his twin brother, Benzaiten, were as close as two people could get without being physically attached to the hip. Although Juno was generally regarded as the angier, more moody sibling, Ben was usually all smiles and laughter. The two were able to balance each other out, with Ben keeping Juno afloat and Juno keeping Ben grounded. Juno was pessimistic, while Ben was optimistic. Despite their differences and occasional arguments, the two of them genuinely loved each other and were inseparable. Their mother, Sarah Steel, was...complicated. She was someone who “let her hurt pour out and hurt other people”, as quoted by Juno in “Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection”. Whenever she was having a particularly rough day, she was prone to violent outbursts and depressive spirals, and most of the fallout subsequently ended up being brushed onto her children. Still, she genuinely loved her children, and the stories she wrote were her way of showing her love for them.
Of course, that all changed after the Turbo incident. Sarah Steel worked as a writer at Northstar Entertainment, an entertainment company that specialized in children’s media. Essentially, the Disney of Mars. Sarah Steel and Jack Takano, two of the best writers for the company, helped create one of their star franchises, “Turbo, the Man of the Future”. Jack was a frequent visitor to the Steel estate, and was adored by both Ben and Juno. When the studio began to struggle to stay afloat, it decided to cut all but one writer. Sarah and Jack were both considered for the spot. Whoever could come up with the better show pitch would stay with the company. Jack and Sarah were thus pitted against each other. Sarah Steel worked night and day to develop her own pitch--”Andromeda, the Chainmail Warrior”. She put many aspects of her own life and experiences in it, as she wanted to create a hero that her children could look up to and model themselves after. The day before the pitch meeting, Sarah Steel went out for the day, having hired a babysitter to look after her four-year-old children and left the door unlocked so he could enter the apartment. Juno and Ben had a fight, which resulted in Ben running out of the house and leaving Juno alone, terrified. It was then that Jack entered the apartment, helping to calm Juno down and declaring that he would help clean up the mess. He entered Sarah Steel’s office and took copies of her pitch idea and left, telling Juno that “If anyone asks, you tell them that Turbo did it”. When Benzaiten and Sarah eventually returned, Sarah was distraught and frantic that the house had been broken into and that the kids had been alone for several hours.
The next day, at the pitch meeting, she realized that Jack had stolen her pitch idea and had a meltdown, resulting in her being fired and Jack taking all the credit for her ideas. “Andromeda” ended up becoming one of Northstar’s most successful franchises. As he was only four at the time, Juno had completely blocked out almost all memories of this incident, warping them under his own impressions of Sarah and almost completely suppressing the memory of Jack Takano, replacing him with the image and voice of Turbo. After she lost her job at Northstar, Sarah Steel’s mental health took a nosedive as the number of “bad days” she had ticked up exponentially. She would frequently berate and criticize Juno for “letting the hero rob us blind without taking a thing”, though Juno didn’t know what she was talking about, thinking that the burglar had just entered the house and didn’t steal anything. He began to think of her as crazy and unreasonable. Her abuse got to the point where Juno could barely stand to be in the same house with her. In order to escape, he signed up for training at the Hyperion City Police Department, intending to never see her face again.
Although Juno left the house for the HCPD, Benzaiten stayed behind with Sarah. Hell, even when it came to a terrible person like Sarah Steel, Ben couldn’t help but see the humanity within her, which is why he stayed behind. Juno, on the other hand, saw her as nothing but a monster and wanted to get out as soon as possible. Though Juno questioned Ben’s motives for this, he never found out the reasons he why stayed with her until twenty years after Sarah killed Ben. For almost twenty years, Juno blamed himself for Benzaiten’s death due to his inaction--he should’ve pushed harder for him to leave, he should have done something to stop his mother. Ben’s absence in his life only contributed towards his downard depressive spiral.
Juno Steel and the Kitty Cat Caper, Part 2
Juno idolizes the idea of being a hero, of being able to “do good”--saving or helping others and making sure that they can’t be hurt again. In away, his fixation on “doing good” was a way to distance himself from ever becoming like Sarah Steel. If he tried to help other people, maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to stop himself from hurting them. He considers himself the hero of his own story, the protagonist, the one who has to be better than the bad guys in order to win. Don’t think, just do. You have finite breaths, and finite people to save. However, this need to help other people also feeds into his self-destructive tendencies. Juno is frequently reckless, throwing himself in harm's way if it means that someone else won’t get hurt. He readily takes a knife in the arm for someone, even if it means he becomes dangerously close to bleeding out, and even throws himself in traffic at one point to rescue a client’s cat. It’s heavily implied that Juno sometimes actively seeks out harm--perhaps maybe by sacrificing himself doing something “good”, he’ll prove himself to be inherently unlike his mother, who, in his eyes, did nothing but hurt the people around her. The only time that Juno allows himself to break from this cycle of self-loathing is when he’s actively putting himself in danger for others. His moral obligation and black-and-white thinking also allows him to easily be manipulated and swayed by mayoral candidate Ramses O’Flaherty, whos promises to do good for Hyperion City with Juno’s help. Juno thus aids Ramses in exposing current Mayor Pilot Pereya’s corruption and allowing Ramses to be elected mayor. However, it is eventually revealed that Ramses has also contributed many atrocities of his own, such as ensuring that Pilot would take the responsibility for his own crimes and using Juno to advance his own career. The incident causes Juno to reevaluate what he thought was right and wrong, and how him doing “good” really lead to him just hurting more people.
When he fails to rescue someone or when his actions inadvertently lead to someone getting hurt, he feels immense guilt. Even if he really only had a small role, Juno almost always blames himself for the whole incident. He’s even blamed himself for his friend’s sibling’s death, despite the fact that he and his friends all contributed to her death and the fact that he was ten-years-old at the time. Of course, it’s easier to blame yourself for not doing anything than thinking that maybe you just couldn’t save them, or maybe they just had to die. It’s easier to admit and believe that you’re a terrible person instead of trying to brush off your involvement in the situation. After all, didn’t your mother repeatedly say that you were the reason she lost her job, the reason she had her pitch idea stolen and made her break down and lose her job? If you just brush it off, you’re just like Sarah Steel--never admitting her own guilt, never caring about others besides herself and her children. And he hates it. He hates the fact that his actions remind him of his mother. Every angry outburst he’s had, every bruised knuckle and smashed glass has held the name “Sarah Steel” on it. Every action that would have otherwise reminded him of his mother is something to stay away from, something that’ll make his stomach churn and make him feel sick about himself. Just another piece of evidence that he’s the worst person in the world, that he’ll never be the hero he wants to be, that it’s only a matter of time until he’ll just become a monster like Sarah Steel. When he’s in these depressive spirals, he frequently drowns his guilt in whiskey until he passes out, something he inherited from his mother. Only recently has he been able to come to slightly better terms with the fact that mother still lives within him, and that he can be a better person than Sarah Steel could have been. Old habits die hard, though.
JUNO: Well, I’m more of a lady myself, anyway.”
Juno Steel and the Midnight Fox, Part 2
Juno’s smart mouth and sarcastic attitude has earned him plenty of trouble throughout the years. Most people that first meet him end up wanting to punch him within a few minutes. His mother was frequently annoyed by his attitude, to the point where when Ben accidentally seemed “fresh” with her, she mistook him for Juno and shot him dead. During his HCPD days, he was widely regarded as one of the most volatile and frustrating people to deal with. Although he eventually was able to work his way up and become a captain, he only lasted a day as such. His handling of the Hijikata case resulted in him getting kicked out and blacklisted by the squad, though no details about the case have been revealed to the audience yet. He frequently delivers snappy one-liners to his foes, and even complains when a criminal starts running off while he’s in the middle of his sentence. One can see this attitude towards others as a way to keep them away from him, to bite them before they bite him. He keeps most everyone at arm's length--he only ever reluctantly admits that his childhood friends are still his friends, and is afraid of not living up to the standards of those he loves. He only begrudgingly allows Rita, his secretary, to get somewhat close due to the fact that he regards their relationship as purely professional.
His self-loathing and depression makes Juno stubborn and hesitant to change his ways and view on life. This cynical outlook is largely reflective of his depression, with him saying how he’ll never be able to be anyone other than his mother, how the people of Hyperion City will always be crooked and selfish, how no matter how hard he tries, he’ll only end up hurting more people. For almost all of his life, Juno has regarded almost everything in black and white, things are either right or wrong, you're either a hero or a monster, you're a good person or a bad person. He hates to admit when he’s wrong, which Benzaiten used to tease him about. When he believes in something, he adamantly defends it, even when he starts to realize when he’s wrong. When he realized that Ramses had used him to advance his own goals, he initially refused to believe it, because that would mean that all of the deaths that he had been responsible for would have been for nothing. He’ll try and maintain an incorrect fantasy if it means that he doesn’t have to face the harsh reality of the situation. Whenever people try to encourage Juno to seek help for his own problems, he frequently tries to redirect the conversation with a sarcastic quip and refusing to seek help. Because, really, Juno believes he deserves these problems. He deserves to get hurt because it means he isn’t the one hurting others, even though his self-destructive behavior frequently affects those around him.
As cynical as Juno is, there is a part of him that wishes and hopes that there is some good in the world. Even when all hope is seemingly lost, or even when he thinks everything is going to go wrong, he still wants to be able to help others, as seen in “Juno Steel and the Time Gone By”. After he discovered he had been betrayed by Ramses O’Flaherty, he loses his direction in life and is eventually picked up by a man in a brown jacket to do a job for Buddy Aurinko. When the job turned out to involve Buddy’s old partner, Juno decided to stick around and see if he still could help people. Don’t get the wrong idea--he’s not a selfless hero and doesn’t view himself as such. He’s still rather self-absorbed, believing that he’s responsible for the terrible things that happen to his clients, and that he has to save Hyperion City, because, dammit, even as terrible as it is, it’s still his home. And if he’s not going to do something, who will? Juno wants to believe that, maybe, just maybe, not everything is terrible and that he might be worth something to someone out there, which is why his work as a private eye takes up almost every aspect of his life. Of course, the only time he really admits this to anyone is when he believes that he will die. In “Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place,” when Juno has trapped himself with the Martian bomb to prevent it from reaching the surface of Mars, he admits to Peter Nureyev that he almost makes him feel like life is worth living. Even after Nureyev pleaded for Juno to let him in, that he doesn’t have to face the world alone, Juno had resigned himself to sacrificing himself for the rest of Mars.
Juno is absolutely terrified of having anything good happen to him, to the point of sabotaging anything good out of fear that it will ultimately end badly for him or others. He’s distrustful of anyone who shows any sort of good will towards him, because why would anyone trust and help a horrible person like Juno Steel? When Juno first saw Nureyev again during “Train from Nowhere”, he was convinced that Nureyev was secretly plotting against him and that the reunion was far too good to be true. Juno dug through Nureyev’s jacket pockets for evidence and found several scrap pieces of paper with unidentifiable symbols--a code, Juno assumed. When he confronted Nureyev about it, Nureyev revealed that they had merely been doodles, and he was hurt that Juno would distrust him in this way. After the martian bomb went off and Juno was unharmed, he and Nureyev reconciled, with Nureyev making an offer--leave Mars, and come with him to explore the galaxy. Though Juno was initially hesitant, he agreed to go with Nureyev. However, in the middle of the night, Juno left Nureyev without a word, under the preface of his own duty to protect Hyperion City. In reality, however, Juno was terrified of not living up to Nureyev’s standards and couldn’t stand the thought of hurting him. Thus, he decided to end the relationship before it even began. After all, better to let yourself get hurt than to hurt others.
After the events of “Monster’s Reflection”, Juno is trying to come to terms with his mother’s abuse and her own presence in his life. He’s realized that she wasn’t the huge, unlovable monster that he made her out to be, but that doesn’t mean that he has to forgive her for the years of abuse she’s put him through. He’s taken on a less black-and-white view of the world, though it’s a bit difficult to break out of the thinking habits you’ve had for thirty years. His strong moral compass still drives him to do “good” things, only now...now he has more freedom than before. He’s trying not to quantify “good” or “bad” based on what external forces dictate him to do, but rather, what he believes is right. Juno’s still the same old stubborn, bratty detective, but now he's learned to recognize his own actions and thoughts and try to address them appropriately. Though he'll definitely slip up more often than not.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- Determined
- Conscientious
- Resourceful
- Sarcastic
- Self-sacrificing
- Cynical
- Stubborn
- Reckless
- Depressed
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits, please!
Opt-Outs: Wendigo, arachne, nephilim, simulacrum
Roleplay Sample:
Sample 1 + Sample 2!