Matto
Kisseus Heathrow Matto
Brendan Hines
Brendan Hines as Kisseus Heathrow Matto
Name: Kisseus Heathrow Matto
Alias: Kissy Bear
Age: 25
Hair & Eyes: Curly, dark brown hair; dark green eyes
Faction: Air Wing
Position: Raptor Pilot
Colony: Tauron/Leonis
Play Times: ???
Timezone: Eastern

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
from my first entrance in,
drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
whether I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here."
He said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee."

Love took my hand and, smiling, did reply,
"Who made the eyes, but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it does deserve."

"And know you not," says Love, "Who bore the blame?
My dear, then, I will serve.
You must sit down," says Love, "And taste my meat."

So I did sit— and eat.

- George Herbert, "Love"

IlMatto

0 - Il Matto

The Fool is titled Le Mat in the Tarot of Marseilles, and Il Matto in most Italian language tarot decks. These archaic words mean "the madman" or "the beggar", and may be related to the word for 'checkmate' in relation to the original use of tarot cards for gaming purposes.

In the earliest Tarot decks, the Fool is usually depicted as a beggar or a vagabond. In the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, the Fool wears ragged clothes and stockings without shoes, and carries a stick on his back. He has what appear to be feathers in his hair. His unruly beard and feathers may relate to the tradition of the woodwose or wild man.

In the Rider-Waite Tarot deck and other esoteric decks made for cartomancy, the Fool is shown as a young man, standing on the brink of a precipice. In the Rider-Waite deck, he is also portrayed as having with him a small dog. The Fool holds a rose in one hand and in the other a small bundle of possessions.

The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world. The sun shining behind him represents the divine nature of the Fool's wisdom and exuberance. On his back are all the possessions he might need. In his hand there is a flower, showing his appreciation of beauty. He is frequently accompanied by a dog, sometimes seen as his animal desires, sometimes as the call of the "real world", nipping at his heels and distracting him. He is seemingly unconcerned that he is standing on a precipice, apparently about to step off.

The number 0 is a perfect significator for the Fool, as it can become anything when he reaches his destination. Zero plus anything equals the same thing. Zero times anything equals zero. Zero is nothing, a lack of hard substance, and as such it may reflect a non-issue or lack of cohesiveness for the subject at hand.

Biographical Info

History

Family

Kisseus Heathrow Matto was born to Tauronese aristocrats. He was more or less raised by servants, his parents only taking superficial interest in his life while absorbed in their own business politics and society wars. He had an older sister who was being fast tracked into a legal career, while he was being groomed to inherit his father's business empire. At age eleven he was engaged to a girl of ten for the sake of a contract between his father's corporation and another business which, while smaller, would shore up the empire and bring in record levels of profit.

Kisseus, however, being a contrary child with an active imagination and an overdeveloped sense of romanticism born from reading too many old books, bucked against the match, and, at age twelve, gathered a sack of his belongings and took off with his boyfriend, Octavian Memnoni. He would never return home.

Education

Kissy and Tavian found passage to the holy grail of runaways, drifters, hippies and dreamers, the Twin Cities of Thalattra and Columella on Leonis, the former known for its harboring and nourishing of young, impoverished artists, the creation of some of the Colonies' greatest bands, grassroots theatrical programs, gorgeous hand-made artwork and crafts, massive homeless population and free-spirited society, the latter known mostly for the massive gilded temple of Aphrodite, a monument to pleasure of all sorts. The twin cities drew two sorts of society: the dregs and the cream, the former to create, the latter to purchase and sightsee.

The boys had both had top grade private instruction on Tauron, which put them at about the level of a high school education in any school system in the Twin Cities. On Leonis they learned somewhat more practical skills. They learned music and dancing and juggling and magic tricks, and how to earn a living off of tourists and how to sleep on streetcorners and subsist on nothing but handouts and one another's love. They learned the towns and they learned their place in them, and they lived life to the fullest, without regrets, which is still the greatest lesson Kissy draws on from those days.

After a Bad Experience (see below) at Aphrodite's Temple, Kissy ended up by himself in the Twin Cities, and began to turn toward a more practical mode of existance. He got involved at the age of sixteen with a less-than-above-the-board taxi service, and he became at least self-sufficient on the paltry cuts he got to take of the tips and other money scammed off of hapless tourists. He never complained; it was more money than he was used to seeing, and this endeared him to some of the men running the operation, who happened to be members of the Aquarian mafia. Yes, this story just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? They took an interest in the kid, and made sure that he was enrolled in a local high school, where he was bright enough to get by with middling grades without too much effort, and they also got him medical care, which he hadn't had in a while, which came in handy as he had been developing asthma from the rampant smog in the twin cities. They promoted him to one of their personal drivers, and trusted him enough to get him trained and into an intercolonial taxi service, where he actually got to keep all of his pay in return for taking aboard the occasional 'sensitive' parcel or passenger.

This was about the time Kissy figured out that these guys were nobody he should probably have been dealing with. He looked into colleges, and found the sketchiest-looking 'Accredited! Guaranteed!' online university he could afford. He majored in literature. That was pretty easy, basically amounting to reading books and writing little book reports. He finally found a program at the university that was connected up with the naval colleges, and, having his own vehicle at his disposal, he began that coursework as well, on the sly. One day, after his degree had been electronically registered with the navy, he simply up and disappeared, leaving behind a pack of not-so-pleased mobsters.

Reputation (or Mil. Service)

The Navy was really the perfect solution for Kissy. It offered constant protection, since civilians couldn't just storm in off the streets; he was fairly nomadic by nature, so he took to being on a ship full-time. And, of course, he met Poppy. She was assigned to him as his ECO only a couple weeks into his service, and hasn't left his side since. For their first leave, Poppy took Kissy home to meet her mum, and mum, as Kissy came to call her, took him in, giving him the mother figure that he'd never really had before, Poppy becoming the sister he'd lost to Tauron. He was content, and quickly came to have a reputation as a fun guy, friend to everyone— or almost everyone, at least. There were always those who took the uniform that extra degree of seriously who would brush him off. He doesn't fit the military mold. He only barely scrapes by the physical fitness requirements. He doesn't like to drink, smoke, frak or hit things. He's addicted to gummy bears. He carries an inhaler at the gym and on CAP. And his callsign is Kissybear. But he wears it proudly, never one to take himself too seriously or pay much heed to those who do.

Distinguishing Features

  • He is adorable. There's something about him. The curly dark brown hair, the deep green eyes, the flashing smile, the softness of his face and frame, the unkempt stubble on his cheeks and chin. He has a way of making people feel comfortable around him. His smile in particular has a way of making him look like an old friend even on first meeting him. He's a teddy bear. Cuddle him.
  • He has asthma. If he ever can't quite seem to breathe, this is why. It is also why he doesn't smoke.

Trivia

  • He is religiously unclean. When visiting the Temple of Aphrodite in Columella with Tavian, the priests there took the couple aside to announce that the Goddess had appeared to them in a vision to tell them that Kissy was, indeed, straight. This upset the rather religiously minded Tavian, who subsequently left him. Kissy, in turn, got drunk, returned to the temple and cursed the altar, spitting on it to spite the Goddess. He has refused to be cleansed of his religious impurity, and, perhaps on account of this incident, has serious difficulties achieving or maintaining sexual arousal for either men or women. Kissy is no longer religiously unclean, having been purified and reconciled with the Lords.
  • His biological mother was an Ikarias, a daughter of a noble Tauron family which traced its ancestry back to Ikarius, who appears in canonical scriptures as the first priest of Dionysus, but who, according to Ikarias family cult records, was later deified himself. Kisseus' first name reflects his ancestry on his mother's side: Kisseus means 'wreathed in ivy' and is a cult epithet both of Dionysus and his followers. Kisseus' 'real' mother, of course, was Poppy's mum, who took him in as if he were one of her own.
  • He is addicted to gummy bears.

Skills

  • Driving
  • Piloting Raptors and other shuttlecraft
  • Vehicle and craft repair
  • Busking

On the Grid

Quotes

On Death: "Peaceful would be nice. Quick would be even better, I think," Kissy muses on options. "You know the sort I mean, when your brain doesn't even have time to process what's going on. Optimal," he scratches at the back of his head. "But I guess, yeah, I'll take whatever they've got when I get to the front of the line," he chuckles faintly, "With all the nukes that fell, they might be all out of 'instantaneous.' Hell, we're seriously at the end of the line, they've probably only got the freakish weird stuff left. Flesh-Eating Bacteria and Trampled by Elephants."

My first effort toward depicting the tarot card 0 - Il Matto in pose form:

Matto drifts down from the berthings corridor toward the stairwell, not in the least looking where he's going. Like a man walking through some strange but ineffably pleasant dream, a smile on his face, eyes distant, boots half-unbuckled, two fingers trailing along the wall as he wanders.

Recent Kissybear Sightings

Not-So-Recent Kissybear Sightings

Past Debts

Known Associates

A Picture A Thousand Words
poppy.jpg
Lieutenant JG Poppy "Flower" Tusculani: I guess it's natural for people to grow apart in time. I never thought it would happen to Poppy and me, but it has. If there's any merit to the adage that ignorance is bliss, Poppy and I exemplify it. I miss the days before that first fall from paradise, when Poppy and I were best friends and I was closer to her than a brother to a sister. We shared laundry and telepathic communication. Now that the Bitch has stuck her nose into things, everything seems ruined forever. I hope it's not. But I'll give her her space.

Sing a Song of Sixpence:

Timeline of Events

Quotes

Misc

  • Gummy Bears
  • True Love
  • Cuddles
  • Poetry

Gallery

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