application for eachdraidh.

[madeover]

( PLAYER ★ INFORMATION )

NAME: Court
AGE: 26
CONTACT: demonology or that damn showy @ AIM
CURRENT CHARACTERS & LATEST AC: N/A

( CHARACTER ★ INFORMATION )

DOES THIS CHARACTER MEET SKELETAL BASICS? Yes, the movie is essentially about his transformation as a person and he interacts with a number of different people, which I'll touch on the Personality section.
NAME & AGE: Eggsy (Gary) Unwin; 22
CANON & CANON POINT: Kingsman: The Secret Service; at the end of the film
CANON INFORMATION: Wiki link!

PERSONALITY:

Much of Eggsy's personality is tied up with his past and his upbringing, but the plot of the movie also revolves around him overcoming those aspects of his background that held him back. The other important thing to keep in mind about Eggsy is that even though the movie is about his transformation from a street kid into a polished gentleman spy, in the end there's not much about him as a person that changes. He needs a push and he needs the opportunities that Harry gives him, but at his core he's the same person.

Eggsy at the beginning of the movie is lost, plain and simple. Losing his father at a young age, Eggsy was instead raised by his mother and eventually his stepfather, the latter who turned out to be abusive to both Eggsy and his mom. Even though Eggsy's abuse at the hands of Dean is something that's shown explicitly on screen, it isn't something that the film itself dwells on too much, and that's largely because in many ways the story is portrayed through Eggsy's eyes. This may sound contradictory, as there's no denying that Eggsy is a victim of abuse, but he downplays that as much as possible. When he speaks about getting rid of Dean and running an abuser out of his life, it's always in the context of getting him away from his mother. Of course, that would also result in getting Dean away from Eggsy, but he never focuses on his own abuse and he never speaks of it to anyone in explicit terms.

It's being raised in this kind of strained household that altered Eggsy from a promising child into a young man who'd been beaten down and left with nowhere to turn. He'd been excelling in gymnastics as a child, to the point that he might have gone to the Olympics, only to then be forced to quit because Dean didn't approve. When Harry, the man who's to become his mentor, presses him about why he quit Eggsy replies that "when you grow up round someone like my stepdad, you pick up new hobbies pretty quick." That's the closest he ever gets to acknowledging the abuse verbally. (Harry only finds out about it because he puts a tracker/bug on Eggsy and overhears an encounter with him and Dean.) Later on in life Eggsy decided to join the marines and was doing amazingly in his training, but then his mother flipped out, worried that she would lose him the same way she lost his father, and so he felt forced to quit.

So it's clear that his family has taken a toll on Eggsy and that it played a large part in his behavior and trajectory as he moved into adult life. Eggsy always had someone in his life who was putting him down and mocking him for his interests rather than encouraging him. Dean's voice drowned out anything his mother would have had to say about his skills in gymnastics, for instance. He didn't have any kind of father figure to support him and to push him to try his hardest, and so the easier thing to do was to run away from anything that was too hard and fall into being a hooligan. Since Eggsy also didn't really have anyone policing him, it makes sense that he was able to get away with so much criminal activity in his rougher stages.

So with no other recourse and no easy way to get a job, Eggsy turned to petty crime, drugs, and all of those other nasty things that a young person could get involved in that would throw them off track. In spite of this, there are core aspects of Eggsy's personality that exist even at the start of the movie. The most important of these is that when it comes right down to it, Eggsy is kindhearted.

He didn't have an easy childhood and that could have made him cruel, but it's established multiple times over the course of the film that Eggsy's driven by his need to keep people safe, particularly his mother. When only five years old, Harry tells Eggsy to "take care of your mum," and it appears he took that to heart. Never once does Eggsy blame his mother for being stuck in an abusive relationship. He puts all of the blame where it should be -- on the abuser -- and also holds himself accountable when he has to leave home for a long period of time and returns to find his mother's face bruised. (Eggsy: "Where is he?" Michelle: "I'm fine. Eggsy, please, please--" Eggsy: "No, I should have never left you on your own. This stops right now.") He has a younger sister, a half-sister, but he doesn't hold it against her that she's the daughter of his abusive stepdad. No, he absolutely adores her. Also, when he's only just met Harry (his mentor figure) and they're threatened by some guys that Eggsy pissed off at a bar, Eggsy warns Harry to leave before it gets physical, not wanting Harry to get caught up in his problems even though that means he'll be facing the thugs all on his own. (Thug: You should get out the way grandaddy, you'll get hurt and all. Eggsy: He ain't joking, you should go.)

This kindness also extends to animals. Early on in the movie, Eggsy is in a car chase with the police and he spots a fox in the road. His friend even says, "Foxes are vermin, you should have run it over." Instead Eggsy swerves to avoid hitting it and crashes the car as a result, ruining every possibility that he had to get away with his crimes. (The car had been stolen, and he drove it backward through traffic.) Later on in the movie, one of the tests he has to undergo to become a Kingsman agent requires shooting his pet dog. Even though it means failing out as a Kingsman, Eggsy can't bring himself to pull the trigger.

Another key aspect of Eggsy's personality is his loyalty. He will never turn his back on someone he considers a friend, or sell them out. During the car crash mentioned earlier, he orders his friends to get out of the car and run away before he confronts the police because he doesn't want them to get involved, and when he's questioned later at the police station, he refuses to give the officers their names. When Harry reveals to him that he's a Kingsman agent, he's about to erase Eggsy's memories when Eggsy insists that he won't tell anyone about him.

Harry: "Now, I should apologize, Eggsy. I shouldn't have done this in front of you."
Eggsy: "No, please, I won't say nothing, I swear. If there's one thing I can do, it's keep my mouth shut."
Harry: "You won't tell a soul?"
Eggsy: "Ask the feds, I've never grassed anyone up."
Harry: "You promise?"
Eggsy: "On my life."

That proves to be true even when his stepdad tries to beat the information out of him. This is also tested later on during the Kingsman trials when there's a mock situation (though Eggsy thinks it's very real at the time) where he's tied to train tracks and told that he'll only be released if he gives up secrets about Kingsman. He doesn't give up the intel and therefore passes the test.

So, rough around the edges as Eggsy might be at the start of the movie, Harry sees the potential in him, that those edges can be polished and that he has the makings of a Kingsman agent. And Eggsy does well in every test but the aforementioned shoot-your-dog one. Despite the fact that he sometimes comes across as dumb (not knowing the difference between a pug and a bulldog, for instance), he's actually both sharp and perceptive. For example, he's the one who realizes that Arthur, the head of Kingsman, is actually in cahoots with the villain, as he notices a scar on his neck that gives him away. Also, during a high stress situation where it looks like all is lost and he is most certainly dead, he uses some information he'd been given earlier and figures out a way to get out of that bind, showing that he can think on his feet.

Speaking of which, Eggsy is very much a thrill seeker. He's all too excited when one of the Kingsman tests involves sky-diving, and he's practically like a kid in a candy store when he's shown the various different Kingsman gadgets he'll have access to. He takes a kind of childish glee in anything that's cool and appears to be more in his element in the middle of a firefight with explosions all around him than trying to keep up a cover. To be fair, this is probably because he doesn't have that much experience with the latter, and it's something he'll be working on.

A big hurdle that Eggsy had to get over was the chip on his shoulder he had in regards to his class status versus the posh people he had to interact with for the sake of Kingsman. In fact, when Harry is originally pushing Eggsy about how he quit the Marines, he pushes back, saying that his mum "didn't want me being cannon fodder for snobs like you, judging people like me from your ivory towers with no thought about why we do what we do. We ain't got much choice, you get me?" These feelings aren't entirely unwarranted, given how some of the other Kingsman candidates treated him, making fun at his expense and essentially belittling him for his low upbringing. (The made fun of his name, teased him about his lack of a college-level education, etc.) However, there are a few people who see past that and treat him like they would anyone else, and those people he takes a shining to over the course of the movie.

First and foremost is Harry, who is Eggsy's mentor figure in the movie and the one who allows him the opportunity to change his life. He's the first person who looks at Eggsy and sees more than some rundown kid with no future, who identifies his potential. Granted, he still called Eggsy out on his behavior, remarking that it was "always someone else's fault" when Eggsy tried to make excuses for the decision to drop out of the military and give up his passions. Granted, at this point Harry wasn't aware of the abuse, but he still made the point that Eggsy needed to take responsibility for his own choices instead of pushing the blame onto other people. Despite this, Eggsy gets attached to him in a short amount of time, especially since Harry in some ways also serves as a father figure, the one that Eggsy never had. Harry imparts wisdom on Eggsy about the true meaning of being a gentleman and supports him all the way through the Kingsman trials. Eggsy therefore cares a lot about what Harry thinks of him and is eager to make him proud. When Eggsy fails at the dog test, Harry is furious that Eggsy would throw everything away, especially since the gun had been loaded with blanks. They have a nasty argument, Harry is disappointed in him, and that's the last time that Eggsy sees Harry before he's murdered, so he's carrying that guilt with him. Even so, Eggsy manages to pick himself up and put his grief aside to go on and save the world. That doesn't mean he's forgotten Harry -- if anything, Eggsy is now doing everything he can to fill Harry's shoes and emulate him.

So Eggsy received no real closure with Harry, which means that he's constantly working to try to hold himself up to Harry's standard without any real way of knowing for sure if he's doing him proud. Merlin (more on him soon) does tell Eggsy after he saves the world that Harry was right and that he would be proud of him, but it's not the same as getting that confirmation from Harry himself, as Eggsy's true mentor figure. Harry tried to impress on Eggsy that he needed to take responsibility for his own actions and also to better himself, so he would have those things in mind as he carried on his life within the Drabwurld.

Then there's Roxy, who was in competition for the same Kingsman slot as Eggsy and in fact succeeded where he failed. Despite the fact that they should have been rivals, Roxy was the one person among the group of candidates who didn't mock him, who treated him like any other person, and so they became fast friends as they went through a series of harrowing trials together. Eggsy always cheered her on and even helped her through one of the trials that almost got the best of her. They had to skydive and when Roxy admitted that she was scared of heights, Eggsy told her, "You'll be all right. You're top of the class." He steps out of the plane backwards (thrill-seeker, remember?) so that she can keep her eyes on him and when she hesitates even then, he says to her over the radio: "Roxy, it's now or never. Jump!" And she does. Later on in the test the two of them are plummeting toward the ground and it's possible one of them doesn't have a parachute. In that moment he says to her, "No matter what happens now, I've got you, all right?" Even though all of this made it all the more likely that he'd lose to her in the end, that didn't stop Eggsy. Roxy was from an upper-class background, but she was kind to him and so Eggsy didn't judge her or brush her off like the others.

Lastly is Merlin, who was the proctor for the Kingsman trials and essentially made Eggsy's life hell for a few months. There was some tension between them at first, particularly with the skydiving test, where the real challenge was that supposedly one of the people falling didn't have a parachute. Eggsy was led to believe that he was that person, and after he'd safely landed with Roxy he confronted Merlin. "Sorry, sir, but why the fuck did you choose me as the gimp? Am I the expendable candidate?" Merlin told him to get that chip off his shoulder and activated his parachute, which had been there all along. Even though that caused Eggsy to be pulled backward and fall on his ass, he ended up smiling to himself because he realized that Merlin respected him. Later on, when Eggsy goes to Merlin with the information about Arthur being a traitor, Merlin doesn't hesitate to enlist Eggsy in the coming fight, even though Eggsy had already failed out of the Kingsman trials by then. They turn out to be a good team and both of them have taken a liking to each other by the end of the film.

With these three people accepting him for who he was despite his upbringing, Eggsy slowly has managed to get that chip off his shoulder. He's at a point where he could rise above any snide comments. Now that he's become a Kingsman (he ends up taking Harry's spot, allowed in even though he failed the trials because he kind of saved the world), he's much more comfortable in his own skin, and a lot less bitter and angry about his lot in life. He's come into his own, and while that doesn't mean that he'll start talking with a posh accent and wearing suits even when he's not on the job, he knows who he is and what he's meant to do.

The very last scene of the film is Eggsy going back to the pub where Harry had wiped the floor with some thugs and doing the same thing to Dean and his lackeys. This is the true sign to the viewer that Eggsy has become a new person and transitioned into a new part of his life. He was able to overcome his abuser, protect his family, and he emulated Harry all at the same time. In fact, he even parrots some of Harry's lines and phrases from the earlier scene: "As a good friend once said, manners maketh man. So, are we gonna stand around here all day or are we gonna fight?"

While Eggsy has abandoned some parts of his old life, it's more about cutting out the toxic parts (Dean) and fixing his own behavior (no more petty crime simply for the sake of acting out). He has no intention of abandoning his mother or his sister, and a lot of what he does as a Kingsman is in many ways for them as much as it's for himself. In that final scene he invites his mother to a new house that they can share together. Eggsy will never forget his roots no matter how far he climbs in the world, and part of what makes him such a good Kingsman agent is that he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In any case, Harry quotes Hemingway to Eggsy when he tries to explain what a gentleman really is, and those words ring true: "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self."

As a final note: Eggsy may have a kind heart and want to keep the people he loves safe, but that doesn't mean he can't be ruthless and do what's necessary for the job. He killed plenty of people for the express purpose of saving the world. The way he sees it, killing is sometimes a necessary evil, and he won't hesitate to pull the trigger if it's for what he considers the right reason. The Kingsman rule is that they don't endorse the taking of a life unless it's to protect another.

COURT ALLIANCE & REASONING:

Eggsy would be put in Unseelie because his entire story is about change, not just in himself but in the organization that he joins. Eggsy's arc in the movie is about his transformation from a hooligan kid with no real direction to a gentleman spy, but that doesn't mean that he alters everything about himself to fit into being a Kingsman. The reason that Harry nominates him and the reason that he's viewed with skepticism by some of the other members of the organization is because Eggsy is so different from their traditional ways -- he's not the rich snob with a fortune at his back who doesn't know how to adapt with the times. He symbolizes a change from that, which is actually what Kingsman needs, as his quick thinking and unorthodox ways are what save the world in the end.

Passion before duty also fits Eggsy in a certain sense. He is capable of following orders and listening to instructions when he believes that it's the right thing to do, but he will deviate from that course if his heart tells him to. When he's told to shoot his own dog to pass the final test to become a full-fledged Kingsman, he can't and won't do it. Getting a job, even one that would change his life for the better, isn't worth killing something he loves. This sentimentality might be seen as a weakness by some, but it actually makes Eggsy stand out because he won't simply kill because he's told to and because it's his job. He's going to make sure he's doing it for the right reasons first. That being said, he can pull the trigger and take a life, provided that life isn't innocent -- and particularly if he's being actively attacked.

Given that Eggsy has been trained to act as a spy, the phrase my word need not be truth suits him. His job is in fact to be a convincing liar, to play a part as someone else and infiltrate enemy areas to either take out a mark or gather some kind of intel. He can be conniving and deceitful for the sake of a mission, even if in his daily life and personal relationships he's more genuine and straightforward.

Even though Eggsy does have certain Seelie qualities (able to do his duty, loving toward people he cares about), the reason I chose Unseelie in the end is because the Seelie court is so focused on tradition when the whole point of Eggsy's character is that he's a deviation from that. Harry is judged by Arthur for his nomination of Eggsy because he "isn't like the rest of us" whereas Harry argues that Kingsman will fall if it doesn't change its traditional ways. Eggsy actively embraces this fact, though it takes the course of the movie to switch from defensiveness to self-confidence. Even so, he rubs it in the faces of the other candidates when he's able to excel at the tests despite being "low class." When he uses sleight of hand (a trick learned during his pickpocketing days) to murder Arthur, he taunts him: "The problem with us common types is that we're light fingered. Kingsman's taught me a lot, but sleight of hand -- I had that down already." Eggsy comes from a different background and therefore has a different point of view that allows him to tackle problems in unexpected ways.

ABILITIES:

As far as powers go, Eggsy doesn't have any. He's a completely normal human, just a well-trained one.

His skillsets are as follows:

- Eggsy took gymnastics lessons from a young age and was really good, to the point that he was in the running to go to the Olympics. While he stopped practicing at some point (an exact age isn't given), some of his skills with it are still present. He's practiced in parkour and is agile/flexible in a fight as a result of these skills (for example, jumping up and off of walls to get around enemies, jumping from balconies).

- Eggsy also went through the majority of marines training before he dropped out, and had been doing well in that area too. So he has some military training, which was added onto through his Kingsman training -- the bottom line being that he knows how to fire guns and use other weapons. There's a comment made about his weapon scores being excellent and he's shown within the movie taking down a lot of different enemies with handguns and machine guns.

- Since Eggsy does have a history of petty crime, he's got some of the skills that would be associated with it, most notably sleight of hand. This makes him able to pickpocket, and also switch his drink with another drink without the person he's speaking to noticing. It can be assumed that he can do things like pick locks too, but that's not concretely stated in the film.

- He's trained to be a spy, and that means having the skills to go undercover and act is if he's someone else, changing his accent and demeanor as is required. Eggsy is still pretty new to this kind of work, though.

- Other notable things Eggsy has done: held his breath for an impressive amount of time (1.5 mins or so), gone skydiving under very stressful circumstances and survived, thrown a blade-leg like a javelin through a window a story above him.

INVENTORY:

- Kingsman issue glasses. Normally these would record everything that Eggsy viewed to a Kingsman server, along with output information about the environment around him. I assume these functions would be disabled.
- Kingsman issue suit. Bespoke, made from bulletproof material.
- Kingsman issue shoes. There's a knife in the sole of the shoe that is coated with a potent neurotoxin.
- Kingsman-issue umbrella, which is made of a bulletproof material and also can shoot both lethal and non-lethal rounds.
- A hand grenade designed to look like a lighter.
- A handgun that's modified to be able to shoot shotgun rounds (though it only has so much ammo).
- A pen armed with poison.
(If any of these aren't permissible, please let me know!)

( WRITING ★ SAMPLES )

NETWORK SAMPLE:

[ Despite the well-fitting suit that Eggsy's wearing when he starts up the video recording, the accent that he uses might not be what people expect, not posh in the slightest.

He's standing smack-dab in the middle of the armoury. ]

I get that this place wants to be medieval and all. Those gremlin things are a nice touch. [ He doesn't even know his dog breeds, he can't be expected to remember the names of fantastical creatures. ] But it's got to stop somewhere, yeah?

[ He uses his free hand to jerk a thumb over his shoulder at the piles and piles of weapons behind him. ]

Sword after sword after sword, but no guns? What kinda armoury is this?

[ He's going to run out of bullets at some point and then he'll be in serious trouble, given that he's supposed to be going out on epic quests from what he's heard. ]

Someone please tell me there's a proper collection of firearms round here and I just haven't found it yet.

And one more thing. Must everything here be so fucking dreary? [ It's starting to get a bit depressing. ]

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