〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Jenny
AGE: 27
JOURNAL: n/a
IM / EMAIL: cephalopods#5148 on discord
PLURK: cephalopods
RETURNING: Nope! I'm a new kid.

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Bobbie Draper
CHARACTER AGE: 30-ish
SERIES: The Expanse
CHRONOLOGY: Post S3, after the mess on the Behemoth
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Random is fine!

BACKGROUND: Here

PERSONALITY:
Bobbie was born and raised on Mars, which is still in the process of being terraformed. This means that, culturally, Martians are have a bit of a reputation: They're intensely hardworking, incredibly nationalistic, tough, and focused far more on the good of the group than the individual. A few characters point out that Mars is an "entire culture dedicated to a common goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden". Bobbie is no exception to these stereotypes, and in many ways begins the story as an archetypical Martian.

In her first appearances she views war with Earth as not only inevitable, but necessary. Like many Martians, she views Earthers as "takers", people who live off of the government's handouts and have spent generations nearly destroying Earth through pollution and global warming. While little is known about her family, it's mentioned that her brothers are engineers and that she and her father would venture outside of the domes in suits purely to rock climb in the Mariner Valley. Bobbie is shown looking longingly at the renderings of a terraformed Mars, with blue skies and green grass, and will stop at nothing to see that future come to fruition. She tells Avasarala that even if military service wasn't compulsory, she would have joined anyway. Even after she defects, she says that she only did it because it was the best way to do her duty and help her planet and people, even though it made her a traitor in their eyes.

Every choice Bobbie makes is in the best interest of Mars and its people. She would do anything to protect her home, even if that means absolutely obliterating her reputation and career. Bobbie's intense loyalty and sense of duty extends to her team, too. She's fiercely protective of those under her command, and takes her position as Gunnery Sergeant very seriously. She does everything to the best of her ability, and never backs down from a challenge. Bobbie knows she's hyper competent and can deal with almost any threat, and that confidence shines through in everything she does.

Bobbie is a leader, and she's used to commanding respect and being obeyed. She has no qualms about giving orders or ruffling feathers, and in fact her first run in with the crew of the Rocinante is horrifically rocky because of her impatient, prickly method of dealing with them. She's perfectly fine threatening people if she needs to, and it's nearly impossible to cow her.

However, this ruthlessness and tendency towards violence diminishes as the show goes on. When Bobbie's team is killed on Ganymede, Bobbie is visibly shaken and traumatized by the events. That guilt stays with her for the rest of the show, and while initially her belief that the attack was initiated by Earth makes her desperate to get revenge, the reveal of what the creature truly was shakes her foundations deeply. At first, she refuses to believe that her superiors would use her team as target practice, but once the evidence becomes irrefutable, she's forced to accept it. All of her life, Bobbie viewed the conflict between Earth and Mars as inevitable, with Mars as the obvious heroes. When the UN's undersecretary ends up being the one to approach her trying to save lives and prevent a war, and her own people are the ones manipulating her and threatening her, it forces her to view things through a much different lens. Her time on Earth does something similar—she discovers that not all Earthers are living a cushy life, and that many people in the lower class are forgotten and suffering.

That eventually leads to Bobbie's defection, a decision she makes purely because she wants to be on the "right" side in order to protect Mars. When she runs into a group of young Martian soldiers who try to take over the Rocinante and kill its crew, she's reminded uncomfortably of herself. Instead of fighting them outright, Bobbie talks them down, which is a huge step in her diplomatic skills and her ability to admit that Mars isn't perfect.

Still, Bobbie is intensely loyal to Mars, even if she's willing to break the rules to protect it. She's a soldier through and through, and she loves being a marine. Settling down just isn't her thing, and she'll always fit the warrior archetype more than anything else. She's not a touchy feely person, either, and there are few characters she'll genuinely open up to and be vulnerable with. She admits that she's used to punching her way through her problems rather than using her social skills, and while this is less true at her canon point, it's still the method she's most comfortable with.

POWER:
Power Armor - Bobbie, like all marines, has a set of power armor. It consists of an undersuit with circuit covered panels that interfaces with the heavier plate armor exoskeleton. The suits are capable of withstanding radiation, small arms fire, and acts as a vacuum suit. They also greatly enhance the marine's strength, and have built in propulsion jets as well as a minigun and grenade launcher.

The suit is vulnerable to electrical surges/attacks, which can temporarily short it out, and when disabled the weight of the suit is pretty much immovable by Bobbie. The seams of the faceplate are also a weak point, and a skilled sharpshooter can target them to great effect.

It also has a couple of neat features like a HUD that can tell the wearer atmospheric composition, outside temperature and pressure, radiation levels, whether parts of the armor are damaged, etc. It can also lock onto targets and zoom in to focus on distant points.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
My name's Bobbie Draper. Considering the tech here seems a few centuries behind what I'm used to, I've got a couple of questions.

I want to know as much as anyone can tell me about space travel here. More than "it's garbage", because I've gathered that much. How often do people go off world? How long are we capable of staying in vacuum? Do any longterm colonies exist, or just short term stays on space stations?

[She's nosy. Kill her.]

And if anyone knows where to get a hand terminal that isn't a brick, let me know. I'm sick of carrying this thing.

[She definitely means a communicator. Whoops.]

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: Here!

FINAL NOTES:

The usual stuff applies!

PLAYER
» HANDLE: Jenny
» CONTACT: cephalopods
» AGE: 26
» CHARACTER(S) IN-GAME: Mako Mori

CHARACTER
» NAME: Roberta "Bobbie" Draper
» CANON: The Expanse
» CANON POINT: 3.04
» AGE: Early 30s

» SETTING: Show page and Bobbie's page.

» SHORT DESCRIPTION: Brave, loyal, disciplined, no-nonsense, quick to judge, confident

» INFLUENTIAL EVENTS:
Life on Mars/joining the MCRN
Bobbie was born and raised on Mars, a former colony of Earth. Mars declared its independence before it was fully terraformed, and once Earth withdrew its support, Mars basically had two choices—continue with its terraforming plans, or funnel all of those resources into building its own fleet to protect itself from Earth. For its own preservation, Mars chose the latter. This means that everyone on Mars lives in domes, and while the population is much lower than Earth's (nine billion compared to about thirty billion), the fact that the population deals with less available resources and an intensely difficult environment means that everyone grows up tough and rugged. Military service is compulsory, and the entire population works on the terraforming project to some degree or another. As one character puts it, they're an "entire culture dedicated to a common goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden".

Nearly everyone on Mars is intensely nationalistic and proud, and view Earthers as weaker and inherently selfish. Most Martians call those from Earth "takers", since the vast majority of the population of Earth lives off of basic income and don't work a day in their lives. Martians also generally view Earthers as unappreciative of the planet and resources they have. Bobbie is no exception, and in her first appearances views war with Earth as not only inevitable, but necessary. While little is known about her family, its mentioned that her brothers are engineers and that she and her father would venture outside of the domes in suits purely to rock climb in the Mariner Valley. Bobbie is shown looking longingly at the renderings of a terraformed Mars, with blue skies and green grass, and will stop at nothing to see that future come to fruition. She tells Avasarala that even if military service wasn't compulsory, she would have joined anyway. Even after she defects, she says that she only did it because it was the best way to do her duty and help her planet and people, even though it made her a traitor in their eyes.

Bobbie's intense loyalty extends to her team, too. She's fiercely protective of those under her command, and takes her position as Gunnery Sergeant very seriously. She does everything to the best of her ability, and never backs down from a challenge. Mars and its future is her sole driving motivation.

Ganymede Incident
After one of Mars' moons, Deimos, is destroyed by Earth, Bobbie is itching for a fight. She and her team are instead assigned to Ganymede, a Jovian moon, much to her disappointment and frustration. Ganymede is one of the largest suppliers of food in the system, and she and her team are deployed to secure it.

Once they arrive on the surface, Bobbie and her team are confronted by six UNN marines who are rapidly approaching them. There's a sudden radio blackout, and in the absence of orders from her superiors, Bobbie orders her men to make a line and only engage the UNN marines if they get within 500 meters. The sudden radio blackout is interpreted by both sides as an attack from the other, and a battle begins in orbit. Bobbie and her marines realize that the UNN marines are running from something—it turns out to be a protomolecule hybrid soldier, which rips through both the UNN marines and Bobbie's unit. She is the only survivor, and the in orbit battle ends up destroying one of the moon's orbital mirrors, which crashes into the station and kills scores of people.

Bobbie is left with a hazy memory of the events, and when she's told that all of the marines underneath her command were killed, she's obviously heartbroken. It's clear she suffers PTSD from this incident and blames herself for the loss of her unit, though she refuses the help of a grief counselor. She also learns that her testimony of what happened during the incident is instrumental. Her higher ups tell her that she's to travel to Earth to testify in front of the UN, because both sides are claiming the other attacked first. Bobbie is told that there was no "seventh man", that the hybrid she saw was a hallucination, and that she's to tell the UN council that the conflict started because one of her men panicked and shot first. This will allow both sides to write it off as a misunderstanding and prevent the conflict from escalating further. Bobbie is horrified by this, insisting that the marine they want her to throw under the bus was a good soldier and would have never done such a thing, but she is ultimately convinced when her higher ups insist that this is in Mars' best interest.

Defection to Earth
During Bobbie's testimony to the UN, she meets Deputy Undersecretary Avasarala, who finds the story fishy and pushes Bobbie for more information. Bobbie slips up, saying that the UNN marines were running from something—a soldier that was on the surface of the moon without a vac suit. The slip is quickly covered up as a grief induced mistake, but Bobbie is still left shaken and upset. She's starting to feel like Mars is willing to throw her and her men under the bus. She escapes her room to see the ocean, and is found by Avasarala, who tells Bobbie that she and her team were cannon fodder. They were being used as a test of a new weapon made by Mars, and the fact that she and her team were essentially massacred was being used as a selling point for this new super soldier. At first, Bobbie doesn't believe Avasarala and tells her to go fuck herself.

But it sticks with her, and so she demands the truth from her superior, Martens. Martens tells her that her generation is weak and unwilling to do what it takes to secure a future for Mars, but when Bobbie "convinces" him (read as: beats the shit out of him), he gives in. He admits that she and her unit were collateral damage, and shows Bobbie proof. He's made footage of the attack into what amounts as a sales pitch. Bobbie steals his communicator with the video, fights her way out of the MCR building, and manages to make it to the UN side, where she requests political asylum. This is a huge shift for her—she's turning her back on Mars, making herself seem like a traitor, and risks being jailed or executed if she ever returns to her beloved home. However, Bobbie has realized that the enemy isn't always easy to pinpoint, and that this is the only way she can really help and protect Mars and her fellow soldiers.

Partnership with Avasarala and seeking refuge on the Rocinante
Avasarala takes an interest in Bobbie, and brings her along when meeting Mao on his ship. Mao has been the one behind all the protomolecule nonsense, and Avasarala has been waging a smear campaign against him and his family and has frozen his assets. Mao wants her to stop this in exchange for giving Earth a sample of the protomolecule. Of course things don't go according to plan and Errinwright, a UN official and someone who has been working behind the scenes with Mao, informs him that Avasarala is the only other person alive who can reveal Mao's role in the conspiracy. So, obviously, Mao and his men try to kill them.

Bobbie and Avasarala end up stranded on the ship with Avasarala's spy, Cotyar. Bobbie is back in her comfort zone, though—she fights her way through the ship and retrieves her power armor, then rescues the two of them. They discover that the only safe way off the ship for Avasarala is a racing vessel that only carries two, and so Bobbie and Avasarala take it. They're intercepted by a massive UNN ship that tries to shoot them out of the sky, and with a lack of any other options, Bobbie sends out a distress signal to any Martian ships in the area, requesting assistance. Of course, the Rocinante just so happens to be a Martian ship, and the crew appears to rescue them. Bobbie and Avasarala are brought on board, and this incident basically marks the point where Bobbie is all in. She's throwing aside her own personal safety to both protect Avasarala and try to stop the war between Mars and Earth. She and Avasarala pretty much instantly butt heads with the crew of the Rocinante—Bobbie doesn't take well to the fact that the crew is flying a stolen Martian ship, and she's furious when she sees that Amos has defaced the Martian flag on the bulkhead. Bobbie is utterly determined to get messages to the UN, revealing the protomolecule conspiracy, but Holden and his crew aren't too into that idea. Still, Bobbie and Avasarala are stubborn, and don't seem overly worried about offending anyone on the ship as long as they can stop the war between Mars and Earth.

Things get worse when a Martian nuke hits Earth, killing two million people, and when the crew discover a badly damaged Martian ship. Holden and his crew decide to go aboard to get supplies and fuel, and Bobbie is horrified by this. She argues with Alex, saying that he of all people on board should be against robbing the graves of fellow Martian soldiers.

However, the crew returns with survivors, and Bobbie seems to mellow out a bit. They take the survivors to the med bay to rest, and they call Bobbie out on being a deserter, which she seems to try to brush off. Later, the three survivors overpower Alex and nearly steal the ship, but Bobbie walks in during this and manages to defuse the situation. She explains to them that she understands that they want an enemy to fight, but that she's learned that determining who the real enemy is is much harder than she ever thought. Bobbie says that the crew of the Rocinante certainly aren't the bad guys, and that the reason she defected was to do her duty to Mars, even if that meant going against the top brass. The survivors acquiesce and release Holden, Naomi and Alex, and this marks a shift in the way the crew and Bobbie view each other.

From this point on they seem markedly more warm with one another, and it's clear Bobbie views them less as poachers profiting off of the Martian casualties, and more as a ragtag group doing the best they can. They're on the same side, and so Bobbie's in when they say they're going to Io in an attempt to save Prax's daughter and destroy the protomolecule lab there.

» FIT: Bobbie is a Martian marine, which means she's been trained heavily in space survival and travel. She's also more than used to crazy situations by this point, so she'll likely deal as well as anyone could be expected to.
» POWERS: n/a, just a normal human!
» NOTES: none!

» SAMPLES: tdm starter here!