Stranglehold/Personality
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
- Parent Page: Stranglehold
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Gideon St.John is definitely not an easy person to get along with. He is definitely not someone who can be easily understood on an intellectual, much less on a rational level. Part of the explanation for this might be found in his rather unusual abilities. How much use does a man who literally thrives on adversity have for friends? And how much of a use does he have for enemies? However, it would be too easy to brush the man off as the result of his powers. Some of his feelings and habits are the obvious results of events in his life while others plain defy any attempt at explanation.
To have said it once, Gideon is not a likable person to most people he meets. While he may wear a mask of civility inside a boardroom, that's not his real face. Loud, brash and crass, openly defiant of accepted social mores, if not straight-out insulting, it often takes a rather special breed to actually more than tolerate the young man over a longer period of time. A psychologist might have a field day with him though.
Personal Outlook
There is a definite basic code under all of Gideon's actions, but it's nowhere near common mores or ethics really. His world view falls apart into a jumbled mess of Nietzsche's philosophy, Crowley's beliefs and a smattering of BDSM fragments that colour the major influences. At its most basic, Gideon's ideal is the Crowleyan 'do what thou wilt' and 'love under will' paradigm. If it's right for you, it's right. You might just have to live with the fact that it's wrong for others and deal with any potential fallout from clashing interests. It doesn't make anyone wrong in a universal sense, just at odds.
Practically, however, he has no issues pushing his own needs and desires past everyone else's, steamrolling the meek and their opinions if they get in his way. Another complication to the anarchic ease of the base idea is his growing understanding that a lot of people prefer to actually be lead by someone else rather than to make up their own mind and just follow their own path. The notion meets both scorn and opportunism from Gideon's side; it's too easy to abuse someone else's passiveness.
Self Control
On the surface, Stranglehold doesn't have any. Plain and simple. He runs his mouth as he wishes, does whatever comes to mind and more often than not employs both actions and words to royally piss other people off, casually mixing racial, religious or sexual slurs with derisive remarks on other people's imagined place in the local social pecking order versus the reality of their status and so on and so forth.
And that's not even touching on the physical carnality and machismo he likes to project at nearly all times (though the former has somewhat lessened since his recent engagement, it's still more than palpable). In his more self-destructive days, he's probably driven off more potential flings with his straightforwardness than he's actually engaged people for a night of fun, but quantity being a quality all its own that was never much of a deterrent.
What most people don't realize however is why that is so. Stranglehold is always embroiled in a literal mental struggle with his own inner demons. Quite simply, this is what takes up what self control he has available to him at most times. There is little energy left for him to even want to bother with exercising control over himself in other areas. Not that he wants to, but more importantly, he plain can't.
