miscellaneous trivia for maskormenace

[devoutish]

LIVING

Alfie's apartment in Maurtia Falls Independent Housing is sparsely decorated, with only a few personal touches here and there (generally books, DVDs, and clothing). Most of the furniture is what was provided by the government upon move-in.

He also has an unlisted second apartment in Maurtia Falls' business district. Unregistered imPorts aren't legally allowed to own property, but he bought it under the table with cash, and currently uses it to store goods. He also stays there himself on occasion, whenever he wants to make himself scarce.

WORK

Sizzlin' Solomons' Scrumptious Scoops (he didn't come up with the name) was a weekly radio cooking show that aired out of a station in Heropa. As its host, Alfie populated each half-hour program with a lot of bad advice, a lot of purposeful mumbling and unclear speech, and a lot of swearing. He did all he could to confuse, annoy, and otherwise repel his listeners. Notable broadcasts include:

Episode 1, "Upside-Down Cake" - air date 9/8/16: Listeners are advised to add three cups of chopped chili pepper to their recipes, and told that the worst of the spice will bake right off, leaving only a very mild aftertaste that will interact nicely with the sweetness of the cake.

Episode 3, "Pecan Pie" - air date 9/22/16: During the second half of the show, listeners are invited to call in and share their favorite recipes. Every caller is hung up on a few seconds into the call.

Episode 8, "Crostata" - air date 10/27/16: A contest is announced. Listeners are told to mail samples of their favorite baked goods to the station. In two weeks' time, ten winners will be selected to win an all-expenses-paid weekend trip to New York City.

Episode 10, "Apple Tart" - air date 11/10/16: No contest results are announced. The contest is never mentioned again. Anyone who tries to bring it up is ignored.

Episode 12, "Banana Pudding" - air date 11/24/16: The episode is conducted entirely in Russian.

Episode 13, "Rugalach" - air date 12/1/16: Apologies are made for the previous week's episode, and the audience is assured that it was just a misunderstanding that won't happen again. The rest of the episode is then conducted entirely in Yiddish.

Episode 15, "Carrot Cake" - air date 12/15/16: During the second half of the show, listeners are invited to call in and share their favorite holiday cooking- and food-related stories. Every caller is interrupted partway into the call and told that their story is boring, stupid, and a waste of time that could be better spent on more entertaining callers. They are then hung up on.

Episode 21, "Quinoa Kale Cupcakes" - air date 1/26/17: Alfie looks up various hipster recipes on the internet, reading them aloud and inserting his own mocking commentary. He is particularly disparaging of vegan and gluten-free lifestyles. The resulting Bwitter hashtag #SuckItSolomons never gets popular enough to trend or go viral, but for a few days it's a popular place for people to share their own vegan and/or gluten free recipes and post pics of the resulting deliciousness.

Episode 23, "Homemade Doughnuts" - air date 2/9/17: In the last ten minutes of the show, listeners are invited to call in so that he can immediately hang up on them. A surprising number of people take him up on the offer. Most of them try and see if they can get out some kind of meme or pop culture reference before he disconnects the call.

Episode 28, "Blueberry Muffins" - air date 3/16/17: Alfie informs his listeners that many cultures have a tradition of baking things like coins or jewelry into pastries, the idea being that whoever gets the piece with the foreign object inside it will have some sort of special status, such as a prize, a favor from someone else at the dinner, or good luck for the rest of the year. He tells them that this is, in fact, a very important tradition for him, and that he would feel closer to his audience if they incorporated it into their next meals. He suggests that they use bearing balls, because he is a businessman and they represent industry. The evening of this broadcast, area hospitals report a 120% increase in patients (mostly college students) showing up to ERs complaining of having accidentally swallowed foreign objects. Happily, no one is injured; all of the ingested objects are small enough that they are able to pass through the system with no issue.

The show ended in September 2017. For the last episode, Alfie found an internet livestream of someone else's cooking show and broadcast the audio of that instead. He gave no real indication that this would be the end - he simply stopped showing up to work after, and ignored all the calls from the radio station asking where the fuck he was.



DAILY ROUTINE

He does his shopping on a weekly basis, usually sometime in the middle of the week. He avoids supermarkets and malls, instead going to specialty stores - he's found a favorite tailor, produce market, kosher butcher's shop, and Jewish bakery.

He only loosely observes the Sabbath, but attends Shabbat services at Temple Beth Israel in Maurtia Falls, and also usually shows up for special holiday services. He keeps to himself, but is generally well-liked, especially since he made a sizable clothing donation to help the needy. He also donated some money to a philanthropy fundraiser that the temple held in the wake of the January 2017 blackout.

His old-fashioned wardrobe - which he refuses to update - will often mark him as an imPort and draw attention to him, but behavior-wise, he keeps a low profile and doesn't welcome autograph-seekers or fan interactions. If he's in a good mood, he'll try to drive them away by gently messing with them (answering interview questions with blatant lies, following paparazzi around and taking pictures of them, etc.), but if he's in a bad mood, he isn't shy about straight-up telling them to fuck off and get out of his face.

He goes to a hospital in Heropa for regular chemotherapy and/or disease maintenance check-ups for his lung cancer, which was diagnosed by his doctor in Maurtia Falls in mid-2017 after it was revealed in canon and I went "OH SHIT OOPS" and scrambled to account for it in-game. He doesn't go to insane levels to hide this, but he's pretty secretive about it overall, and has not directly told any imPort but Maeve Millay.

CRIMINAL ACTIVITY

In Maurtia Falls, Alfie has earned a reputation as a potential middleman for shady business dealings. If someone wants to buy something but doesn't want the purchase connected to them for one reason or another, they can go through Alfie. Generally, he requires full reimbursement for all purchased goods, payment for discretion and for time and effort spent, and (if applicable) payment for storage of goods. Currently, he has no official business established for this, nor has he made any attempt to start his own gang here, but he has several allies (as well as some enemies) in the organized crime world. Many native gangsters like him because they see him as a sort of everyman imPort - sure, he's from another world and he has powers, but he doesn't show them off or lord them over "normal" people, and overall he comes off as pretty normal and down-to-earth himself. Others, however, see this as a weakness they can exploit: some imPort criminals are so powerful as to seem untouchable by non-powered natives, but Alfie isn't one of them, which makes him a prime target for someone wanting to lash out.

Past jobs include:

Supplying Daryl Dixon with the materials needed to build an off-the-grid safehouse
Various jobs for low- to mid-level criminal NPCs

Other miscellaneous shady dealings and/or crime that he has been involved with

Killing two NPC burglars and dumping their bodies in the Maurtia Falls canal
Killing two NPC clients who tried to frame him for kidnapping and use him as a patsy
Getting involved in fixing fights for profit in an underground fighting ring

For the most part, Alfie is a very practical criminal. He likes big stunts and shows for attention when he's trying to make a point, but he does want to have that point, and he wouldn't really be interested in supervillainy or random chaos for chaos's sake. Blackmail, spying, backstabbing/treachery, certain kinds of torture, and murder are all things that he's willing to do, provided that the circumstances are right. He does have something of a personal code/morality that he follows - for example, he'll leave innocent civilians (i.e. people who aren't in any way involved in crime and law enforcement) alone, and he'll go much easier on kids even if they are involved in the crime/crime-stopping world in some way (though depending on their age/personality type/general maturity level, a teenager might count as an adult to him, particularly if they're a boy). In addition, his main goal is, and will likely always be, returning home. He won't want to get involved in anything that might get in the way of that, and if a chance to leave did pop up, he'd readily jump ship on any commitments here.

If you play a criminally-bent character and you'd like them to get in on this in any way, feel free to contact me OOCly (via PM, email, plurk, or a comment on my OOC plotting post), or just hit Alfie up ICly in his inbox! I am also very open to hero types prying into his shit, though in that case, please ping me OOCly first so that we can hash things out.