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player information.
name: Nelly
are you over 18?: yes
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email/msn/aim/plurk/etc: penrosing@gmail.com / oooohloverboy (y!M) /![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
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characters in abax: n/a
in character information.
series: INCEPTION
name: Henry J. Eames (first / middle name are headcanon)
age: Canon: "40s" / Headcanon: 43 / AU post-canon timeline he's plucked from: 47
sex: Male
race: Human
weight: 191lbs
height: 5'11"
[OPTIONAL] cause of death: n/a
canon point: AU: 4 years post-canon.
previous cr: n/a
history:Movie Wiki. Also a helpful interview from the actor who plays Eames that briefly hints toward abilities and general backhistory. Basically, INCEPTION is the sort of "in the moment" type of movie, so we have no given backhistory for Eames other than a suggested military background and a suggested history of knowing Cobb pre-movie (due to having a totem for himself). The script is also important for details like character age, but it doesn't really give any other information. There are also two prequel comics called "The Cobol Job" and "The Big Under," but Eames doesn't feature in either of those.
In the AU, however, Saito's influence doesn't sway the American government, and Cobb is picked up by government officials when going through customs. Please see the alternate history section for the rest!
alternate history:
In the movie, Saito's single phonecall more or less ensures Cobb safe passage through customs / immigrations so that he may return to his family after being separated from them for two years. Due to being suspect to his wife's suicide (perceived as murder due to Mallorie's documentation with her attourney and the wrecked state of the room) and going on the run, as well as participating in various mind crimes which is illegal in canon, Cobb would have been taken into custody upon landing in the United States if it hadn't been for Saito's influence. However, this point and the consequences thereafter is the point at which canon is separated into an alternate history. In the AU, Saito's influence doesn't hold enough power to sway customs into granting Cobb a free ride out of his perceived crimes. Upon Cobb's identity being checked at the terminal, it is discovered that police and other federal agents have been waiting since the plane touched down in LAX.
Everyone who was in the first class flight cabin with him is brought into questioning, including the stewardess. While at first it's only for preliminary questioning to try and timeline how Cobb was able to get a ticket into the US in the first place and follow his trail from there, it is quickly discovered through confiscation of Arthur's belongings that a PASIV device was involved. Due to Arthur's and Eames' history on the military as part of the dream share program, everyone in that first class cabin is now suspect to mindcrime, originally thought to be done onto Saito as a way to influence his attempt to get Cobb into the States. Drug screenings and DNA testing on the device further put everyone into different tiers of guilt of mindcrime or at least illegal usage of the PASIV device (not to mention harboring government property), and everyone is brought into further questioning. They discover that Fischer was the subject of an attempt at inception, and that Saito was the man funding the expedition of sorts - thus, Fischer is let go under no charges but the idea they had worked so hard to plant is for the most part erradicated, and Saito is heavily under spotlight for financing illegal proceedings knowingly and willingly, not to mention taking part of mindcrime himself. Saito's wealth and Japanese nationality are what keep him from being sent to prison, as well as the American government wanting to keep the Somnacin project and technology under wraps as much as possible from the public, so instead of causing further tensions Saito is charged only with anti-competition activity and charged a relatively minor fine before being sent back to Japan.
Dominick Cobb, however, is hardly a man of luck when it comes to both being caught and his sentencing thereafter. Because he's unable to prove that Mallorie Cobb's death was a suicide due to the nature of her inception-induced illness, he's sentenced to a lifetime in prison, with the possibility of parole at the fifteen year mark upon review and good behavior. His involvement in mind crime is, at first, continually kept under wraps until the American government can perceive a way to handle it without leaking the information into the public at large. Arthur is put in a similar situation due to aiding and abetting Cobb's murder by helping him run after the fact, so is also sentenced to a lifetime in prison with possibility of parole after fifteen years; his illegal witholding of government intel and usage of the PASIV device was to be addressed at a later time, not during the initial trial.
Because there is no actual law in place explicitly detailing mind crime, the government has to scramble to find ways to ground the rest of the crew while the investigation is still underway. Eames and Yusuf get caught for their fake identities - while Eames' work is usually high quality, under such harsh scrutiny and the ability for the government to connect him to his old profile of participating in the dreamshare program outs him. Yusuf's fake also, while normally would pass off under casual glance, is not enough to hold up against some serious research. Ariadne, too, is prevented from returning to school right away, restricted to the USA under grounds of technical battery on Robert Fischer with a two-thousand dollar fine.
Robert Fischer is eventually the one who exposes mind crime to the public at large. With a single press conference about the crimes done to him and the unwillingness of the American government to act due to the secrets they wish to keep surrounding the project, the entire fog around PASIV technology and the American and British government's involvement with human testing disappates. Both countries scramble to put together legislation confirming in writing the illegality of mind crime, but at the same time have to divulge information on the technology itself in order for the laws to have any grounding, putting the mass public in a state of frenzy for both the human experiments done on the project's military subjects and for the very personal nature of the technology as a whole. The PASIV is feared around the world as a possible terrorist device for the implications it can have if government officials were ever possibly incepted, or even extracted information from within their dreams, and it is brought under heavy controversy the possibility of using the PASIV device in the first place for "militarization" - the protection of one's subconscious.
During all of this chaos with the government and citizens, as well as critical speculation around the world, Eames and Yusuf are able to blip off the grid by escaping through Florida via some contacts of Eames'. It's risky business - the entire dreaming community is shaken to its very foundation, and thus very difficult for those who used to sleep together and share dreams to even trust one another any longer. The fear of being caught puts Yusuf's dream den profits at stake, some customers fighting against the addiction of the dream in order to not be caught in the crossfire should the Egyptian government also decide to take up the law. In general, the dreaming community all but diminishes - both the extractors and even the entertainment industry of dream arcadists deciding to take everything further underground and stay low until they figure out where the world stands on the use of dreams.
Four years later, it's still an uneasy environment. The United Nations has yet to come to a decision and pass any regulations other countries can follow up on, though the US and the UK both have outlawed any aspect of "dream technology," even as a defense. The majority of extractors are low on work because no one wants to take the risk of hiring them, though arcadists are slowly rebuilding their own separate community, primarily based in Dubai. As for Eames, ever since the government's ability to link him back to his military identity and then extrapolate his presence in the mind crime industry, he's been a wanted man in England for both illegal dreaming and for deserting years ago under the guise of a false death after being sent back out on the field post the closure of Project Somnacin.
It has, considerably, slowed Eames down. While the dreaming community once offered itself as a somewhat safe haven for a certain brand of thief, it has now been split up into different distrustful factions and the arcading community. The arcadists have generally taken to offering Eames certain positions due to his ability to forge and provide entertainment, but Eames simply doesn't like participating in things that seem so unchallenging to him. However, the small groups of extractors that do remain struggle to find work in the first place, nor do they want to hire Eames due to his involvement with the initial contract that blew the lid off mind crime in the first place. Eames has turned somewhat bitter of it all, jaded in people and in losing his place in a criminal circle he was once top dog in. He for the most part has given up on dreams, instead turning to his former work in forgeries, plating, and lower tier con work to continue to attempt to make a living. Primarily he seeks to rebuild his old havana lifestyle before he gets too old to keep up with the fast pace of the world.
personality:Eames is a forger. Attention to detail is his calling card, and he makes most of his living through being able to absorb mannerisms to the point of mirroring them perfectly. Detail isn't just about the aesthetic of things, but to make yourself intimate enough with the inner workings of a person in order to react to constantly shifting situations - within dreams or during a real world con. Quick thinking and creative, Eames survives through being fluid and open minded in the characters he represents within dreams. He has a whip-crack for a tongue, being able to sustain banter and conversation without hesitation. Eames is used to thinking on his feet and out of any limitation of a pre-conceived box, something that makes itself apparent in the way he is able to toss out ideas for the inception job and change his tactics when he is faced with the intricacies of Robert Fischer's relationship with his father.
Being a professional conman, however, leaves Eames' best interests out for himself. In the original script, when Cobb suggests that Eames would never turn him into Cobol, the forger is offended and quickly corrects him. The only reason he does not end up turning in Cobb in exchange for the price on his head is that Cobb comes to him with a suitably better offer: inception. Taking the job provides Eames with another chance to successfully plant an idea on someone's mind and actually have it stick, with the side bonus of a sum of money that you can't just bat an eyelash at. Even with this reward in mind, as soon as the job turns sour due to the fact that Fischer's subconscious has been militarized and Eames' is faced with a greater risk than any of the teammates (aside from Yusuf and Cobb) had originally thought, he immediately wants out. The possibility of monetary gain and the pride of accomplishment don't outweigh the idea that, should he die in the dream, his mind will be turned into "scrambled egg." The circumstances are no longer under any sense of control, and Eames wants nothing to do with it. He has to be coerced back into going through with the inception - only because the projections will inevitably get to them if he stays in Yusuf's level, and he's too much an integral part of the job for the other members to have a chance of success without him. He has little empathy for Cobb by the end of the job, as when they are ultimately faced with the idea of failure once more his only remarks are "So that's it, then? We've failed." and "It's not me who doesn't get back to my family, is it?" His regret lingers not in his inability to help Cobb get back to his family, but in the fact that he wouldn't get to see what would occur between Fischer and his father in the strongroom.
Eames is, notably, incredibly relaxed. He speaks in a lazy, almost matter of fact drawl, interjecting dry humor every now and then regardless of whether or not the situation calls for it. His rebuttals in banter are never delivered scathingly, but are instead direct with certain amounts of teasing in the inflection of his voice, focused much less on sarcasm and much more on subtle hints of mockery. Even when angered, he doesn't raise his voice - instead, he points out the faults of the situation with enough focused intensity for the subject of his emotion to easily hear the anger in the tone of his voice rather than his voice bouncing off the walls in echo of a shout. Violence, for Eames, remains in his sense of quiet and pointedness, directed only where it needs to be - exemplified most by his style of fighting. He brawls without the sense of chaos, instead using violence to its most efficient motions. He isn't cruel. For all of his subtle amounts of teasing, his out-for-himself attitude, and his pure enjoyment in watching Yusuf repeatedly tip Arthur's chair over, there is little need for prolonged torment. He's the first to go for a gun in order to shoot Saito to remove him from the dream after he was shot in the chest by the projections. He's not driven by any sense of compassion for Saito, rather instead perhaps a sense of morals that relates back to his desire for efficiency. To Eames, the fact that the man is a tourist and, ultimately, their monetary benefactor means that he doesn't belong in the dream to begin with, so why continue his agony?
Eames is confident and self-assured, but not overly so. He can observe himself just as well as he observes others, and is more than aware of his own faults and what he needs to work on - particularly for a job. He can talk himself through any problems he may be having with a forge without a sense of pride getting in the way. In terms of personal faults, however, he can't exactly be bothered by what others think of him. He has his gambling and his way of life that may be perceived as selfish, and he knows he is professional and useful in jobs for mind crime as well as outside forgeries. His lifestyle isn't open for critique, because as soon as you begin molding your personal life to the way others wish you to be, you are no longer your own person - you've, essentially, forged yourself into whatever mold someone has created for you. Business is one thing - you have to be able to work well with others to ultimately complete a job, after all, and he can well enough grit his teeth and bear it if the payout is higher than the cost - but personal affairs are something else entirely.
Eames is constantly aware of his surroundings. When your livelihood depends on what you can note about those around you, your natural state is to be hyper aware of these things. His eyes tend to shift from subject to subject, taking the whole image in at first before looking for the small details that allow for the stability of the larger picture - anything from whether or not you tap your pen in nervous behavior to the rock of your heels in impatience. He wants to know those who are new to him - not exactly to the extent of what your favorite color is or your preferred genre of movie, but the things that stand of importance to Eames like whether or not you bite your nails or just the skin around it.
Which, more or less, brings attention to how Eames deals with people themselves. Eames is certainly not the most genuine of people - he's hyperacute and observational, and tends to hone in on someone's motivations first rather than any outreaches of a relationship (friendship, acquaintanceship, so on and so forth). His interactions with people over the years, his work within the mind crime industry, and his lifestyle as a criminal in general have led him to be on the more jaded side of things when it comes to people and their place in their own lives versus his. He's not really sympathetic toward the causes of people he doesn't have a close bond with - when he speaks of Fischer and his uncle's problems, it's more-so like describing a soap opera rather than an actual thing, or something that has any effect on him personally. For the most part it's a side effect of being able to see through bullshit, considering he makes his living out of bullshit to begin with, he doesn't trust easily as a general rule and it makes it hard to get past his somewhat superficial exterior to get to any extention of what the "real Eames" might consist of. At the beginning of any interaction, he wants to know people as far as their usage to him, not necessarily out of personal investment in their well being; in this way he also prevents putting himself in a situation of being used or manipulated in turn.
It isn't to say that Eames is completely incapable of forming relationships on a whole, however. It's just a matter of him choosing to believe you're worth it and, in turn, worth expressing himself with. There's sort of a risk that comes with any movement in interaction beyond just acquaintences and it takes a lot for Eames to be willing to indulge that risk, particularly when the stakes are so high when it comes to his sort of lifestyle. However, just because he doesn't make close friends easily doesn't mean he's a lonely old bastard - it would be unrealistic to think such a social creature as Eames is doesn't have his own core group of people he can get meaningful interaction from - it's just a matter of it being ultimately superficial or worth something more to him beyond observation.
Eames has feelings, thoughts, opinions, values, even an entire life outside of just the dream - he's not stoic nor completely aloof just because he also happens to be criminal; he falls under no true stereotype. He's able to put aside these things, however, when something has to be done and a small amount of compartmentalization is necessary. In Tom Hardy's own words, Eames doesn't dwell on personal issues when he's in the moment - rather he puts them on the backburner and has the sort of driven focus to aim for the things that need to be accomplished and ultimately what he desires. He doesn't let life, as it were, drag him down when he's trying to live it. In this way he can appear rather flippant or obtuse, especially concerning other people, but for Eames there is a time and place to deal with separate things or let them resolve on their own, a viewpoint that can definitely clash with other people who simply can't put aside something as natural as worry.
Not that any of this is really apparent to those who interact with him. Eames is incredibly subtle in all nature of things and knows how to work the term "image-management" like it's his middle name. While Eames really just presents himself as an easy, pina colada cool sort of guy when he's in a relaxed environment and has no need to be something he's not (like in the job environment), he can very easily shift around his usual responses, quips, et cetera depending on who he's talking to. If there's something he needs to tone down about himself to get a person to like him better in order to get to some higher goal, he has no problem doing it, particularly when probing for information whether it be out of a projection or any regular joe. He's not the kind of person who would consider this sort of acting to be detrimental to his own core self - he has himself versus the self he presents in order to manipulate and gain trust as entirely different beasts, the former he keeps constant and the latter he lets be fluid if need be. His ability to act when forging people in a dream is something that doesn't leave the dream; it can be used to con, to emotionally manipulate, to get what he wants, to obtain information, to gain any sort of advantage, or even just to diffuse a situation and avoid getting his own throat slashed. It's not a matter of pride, it's a matter of survival - and Eames would do just about anything to ensure his own survival, white lies meaning very little to him when he's so comfortable with who he is as a person. That part is, as previously stated, not open for change - but everything else and superficial things to get him what he wants are completely variable depending on the situation. Being malleable is something one has to rely on when playing at the mindcrime game or really just any "underground" lifestyle to begin with - you can't always be top dog, and you have to learn how to play well with others if you want to reap any benefits.
Just as well, in combination of everything above, Eames definitely knows which card to play and when to just fold early. He's not the sort of man who needs to be completely in charge - he's more than happy to just provide direction and advice from the background and let the group coordinate and carry it out. He has the capacity to be a leader but he just isn't the sort to step up and take ownership of it it - he knows where his strengths and weaknesses are, and much prefers to bounce back and forth with his teammates as long as he has freedom to stretch his limbs in the areas he is specialized in: subjects of dreams and which buttons you generally want to push at. Even then, though, he appreciates input and is willing to edit and revise his initial assumptions as new information comes in - but, ultimately, Eames knows the mind is a delicate thing, and he needs time to handle it, hence his aggravation when Cobb severely limits his time with Fischer when forging his godfather Browning. As a result, the interaction between Eames-as-Browning and Fischer might not have been on part with Eames' usual standards - he had to guide and push Fischer to a certain direction ( and in turn lose a lot of his subtlety with the forge and con ) rather than let everything progress more naturally, though later on Fischer's own paranoia and Cobb's help as a superior, quick-thinking extractor takes care of the manipulation that needed to be improvised.
In the end, Eames is really just an older gentleman seeking to live his life as he sees fit with a bit of illegal activities to supplement his income - someone who has no intention of backing down in the face of what life throws at him, nor very interested in losing his own personal spark and peculiar brand of ethics and conduct. You either love him or you hate him, and Eames doesn't really care which one you choose.
abilities/powers:
While Eames is human through and through (despite rumours or complaints otherwise,) he's also an old worn out British boozer with a few tricks still up his sleeve. Eames is never painted as the sort of man who keeps his shoes goody-two, particularly considering he's on Cobb's go-to list as a "forger." This title, though later used in correlation to Eames' dream shenanigans, is at first made obvious for his real world talents - obtaining "references;" ergo, falsifying information, signatures, legal documents, whatever he might need for the moment. He's an exeperience conman, and thus has all the bells and whistles associated with that - an easy liar with sticky fingers and a street-smart intelligence he keeps downplayed.
In addition, with his hinted military experience comes a know-how around weaponry, particularly around the big guns. He's a pretty good shot around pistols, assault rifles, and grenade launchers, decent fist fighter, and has experience with bombs - and also fancies skiing while dealing with these things! He also has basic experience with first aid - particularly how to operate an AED, which isn't totally very common knowledge unless you. You know. Look at the pictures or whatever. Placement of the pads is important, you know.
In dreams, Eames has the capability to "forge" a different physical identity and then act the personality to match it - a form of identity theft useful in the dreaming community for emotional manipulation, distraction, coersion, or pleasurable company. The use for them is pretty flexible, overall, and they themselves are flexible - Eames included. He's subtle about it, but he is able to pick up on people on a critically observant manner, though he has every capacity to be wrong or lead astray as well. Eames has a pretty solid ability to read people on a whole, but he's no mind reader nor empath, so he has his margin of error just like any other guy.
first person sample:
[ The following is a secure email sent out during his time in his home verse, about three years post canon, to Yusuf. ]
x,
sorry for the late check-in. You know how sticky it is to find working internet during monsoon season on this side of the mountains ? 2x the effort, i deserve some sort of remark on my willingness to keep in touch but save the monetary supplementation until I get things squared on my end.
Anyway regarding E Ive been hearing thru the grapevine and also regular televised news you really should keep up that its being discussed for EU on a whole not just the Queen's house so Id suggest sticking to southern hemisphere for now. I know Humming is looking for a chemist so you can outsource there for at least an 8 month grant.
Let me know what you decide.
consider that carrier pigeon might be more efficient than email at this point. possible investment ??
Alternatively, there is also this thread, but the Eames there is not an AU version and has had about a year's worth of development, so it might not be the most appropriate.
third person sample:
Nothing personal, Johnson had uttered before producing a manilla folder. Eames should have, he thinks, been knowing of it to begin with - but even he still has the capacity to hope every now and again; hope for his in, to get back into the world of dreaming for particular goals, the challenge of mimicry. The same folder now rests on the low table before him in his small flat, for due consideration that at least touches the fringes of his capabilities. Nothing personal, Johnson says, but instead of outright hiring him he pays him money on the side to go over their current forger's profile on their subject, to look for holes or help spruce up the study. It's so political that Eames hardly knows what to do with himself about it, a head extractor paying out extra on the side just to avoid having Eames' face on their group, a loan on his experience in terms of supplementation.
Just enough to do the work but not enough to carry it out, to slash their tires or whatever it is they suspect his aim to be at the end of the day. Eames isn't sure how his picture in the dreaming community ended up being such a silly one, as though he was the reason that Cobb got caught, that everyone's had to hide a little more under their hoods these days. It is very much, he decides, personal - a personal insult, affront, a personal block to his work, the payout he deserves. He's tumbled, it seems, from top (and most expensive) forger on the dream market to counselor, no matter how much the arcadists want to offer him - a pretty girl here, a game character there, it's just the sort of thing Eames doesn't do any longer, not since he was first starting out, before they knew how far visual manipulation could take them.
He took it anyway, the portfolio. He needs to get paid, after all, with half of his accounts being locked off from access or that he simply can't get to without the hounds breathing down his neck. Admittedly he's lost more than he ever imagined he might, both to the complications of being a wanted man and ultimately to some of the tables in Dubai, errant methods to spend his energy on that's left him a little deep in the pit. A job is a job and Eames is in the position - they all are - of being unable to truly keep to any sense of pickiness. It takes enough to suss out which jobs are legitimate and which are traps waiting to happen, the integral network that was once theirs now being fragmented and scarce ever since the leak.
Eames has to admit, though - even if it was the route no one wanted Fischer to take, he certainly has proven himself as his own man; much to Mister Saito's dismay, if recent stock trends are anything to by. Did their inception really fail with the reveal of Fischer's compromised subconscious? There's no way to tell anymore, how much was their work and how much was the mind simply twisting an idea naturally into something more coherent for the attached personality to follow. Their knowledge of inception had never been truly understood and followed through on from the beginning, just errant trials and errors.
But then, that had all been the fun part, hadn't it? Eames hates lamenting the past, finds it useless and unnecessary, but acknowledges its importance in his present, different changes for different maps, one ending versus another. He refuses, though, to accept this - side jobs away from the greater picture, a steadily draining money source - as his end. This is hardly the person he's ever intended to be, settling for what he can get instead of taking what he wants, being the figurehead of an unfair distrust - if he wanted anyone to distrust him, he would bloody well give them reason to, not simply be part of something that failed.
He gets off the couch to travel into his sequestered kitchen for a drink, and by then it's already decided - no more small time work, nothing meek just for the sake of steadiness. It's been a long enough time spent off of his mark and it's time to reclaim something that belongs to him - not any "glory" to being well known, not any gathering of pride, but instead a comfortable, relaxed life that was his for so long, where living day to day didn't translate into stress over something as inconsequential as a mixture of boredom and needing to find work.
Go big or go home, and Eames isn't ready to submit to someone else's attempts at limiting his own capabilities.
It's simply time to change tactics.
case no: randomize it!
name: Nelly
are you over 18?: yes
personal dw:
phagocytosisemail/msn/aim/plurk/etc: penrosing@gmail.com / oooohloverboy (y!M) /
characters in abax: n/a
in character information.
series: INCEPTION
name: Henry J. Eames (first / middle name are headcanon)
age: Canon: "40s" / Headcanon: 43 / AU post-canon timeline he's plucked from: 47
sex: Male
race: Human
weight: 191lbs
height: 5'11"
[OPTIONAL] cause of death: n/a
canon point: AU: 4 years post-canon.
previous cr: n/a
history:Movie Wiki. Also a helpful interview from the actor who plays Eames that briefly hints toward abilities and general backhistory. Basically, INCEPTION is the sort of "in the moment" type of movie, so we have no given backhistory for Eames other than a suggested military background and a suggested history of knowing Cobb pre-movie (due to having a totem for himself). The script is also important for details like character age, but it doesn't really give any other information. There are also two prequel comics called "The Cobol Job" and "The Big Under," but Eames doesn't feature in either of those.
In the AU, however, Saito's influence doesn't sway the American government, and Cobb is picked up by government officials when going through customs. Please see the alternate history section for the rest!
alternate history:
Everyone who was in the first class flight cabin with him is brought into questioning, including the stewardess. While at first it's only for preliminary questioning to try and timeline how Cobb was able to get a ticket into the US in the first place and follow his trail from there, it is quickly discovered through confiscation of Arthur's belongings that a PASIV device was involved. Due to Arthur's and Eames' history on the military as part of the dream share program, everyone in that first class cabin is now suspect to mindcrime, originally thought to be done onto Saito as a way to influence his attempt to get Cobb into the States. Drug screenings and DNA testing on the device further put everyone into different tiers of guilt of mindcrime or at least illegal usage of the PASIV device (not to mention harboring government property), and everyone is brought into further questioning. They discover that Fischer was the subject of an attempt at inception, and that Saito was the man funding the expedition of sorts - thus, Fischer is let go under no charges but the idea they had worked so hard to plant is for the most part erradicated, and Saito is heavily under spotlight for financing illegal proceedings knowingly and willingly, not to mention taking part of mindcrime himself. Saito's wealth and Japanese nationality are what keep him from being sent to prison, as well as the American government wanting to keep the Somnacin project and technology under wraps as much as possible from the public, so instead of causing further tensions Saito is charged only with anti-competition activity and charged a relatively minor fine before being sent back to Japan.
Dominick Cobb, however, is hardly a man of luck when it comes to both being caught and his sentencing thereafter. Because he's unable to prove that Mallorie Cobb's death was a suicide due to the nature of her inception-induced illness, he's sentenced to a lifetime in prison, with the possibility of parole at the fifteen year mark upon review and good behavior. His involvement in mind crime is, at first, continually kept under wraps until the American government can perceive a way to handle it without leaking the information into the public at large. Arthur is put in a similar situation due to aiding and abetting Cobb's murder by helping him run after the fact, so is also sentenced to a lifetime in prison with possibility of parole after fifteen years; his illegal witholding of government intel and usage of the PASIV device was to be addressed at a later time, not during the initial trial.
Because there is no actual law in place explicitly detailing mind crime, the government has to scramble to find ways to ground the rest of the crew while the investigation is still underway. Eames and Yusuf get caught for their fake identities - while Eames' work is usually high quality, under such harsh scrutiny and the ability for the government to connect him to his old profile of participating in the dreamshare program outs him. Yusuf's fake also, while normally would pass off under casual glance, is not enough to hold up against some serious research. Ariadne, too, is prevented from returning to school right away, restricted to the USA under grounds of technical battery on Robert Fischer with a two-thousand dollar fine.
Robert Fischer is eventually the one who exposes mind crime to the public at large. With a single press conference about the crimes done to him and the unwillingness of the American government to act due to the secrets they wish to keep surrounding the project, the entire fog around PASIV technology and the American and British government's involvement with human testing disappates. Both countries scramble to put together legislation confirming in writing the illegality of mind crime, but at the same time have to divulge information on the technology itself in order for the laws to have any grounding, putting the mass public in a state of frenzy for both the human experiments done on the project's military subjects and for the very personal nature of the technology as a whole. The PASIV is feared around the world as a possible terrorist device for the implications it can have if government officials were ever possibly incepted, or even extracted information from within their dreams, and it is brought under heavy controversy the possibility of using the PASIV device in the first place for "militarization" - the protection of one's subconscious.
During all of this chaos with the government and citizens, as well as critical speculation around the world, Eames and Yusuf are able to blip off the grid by escaping through Florida via some contacts of Eames'. It's risky business - the entire dreaming community is shaken to its very foundation, and thus very difficult for those who used to sleep together and share dreams to even trust one another any longer. The fear of being caught puts Yusuf's dream den profits at stake, some customers fighting against the addiction of the dream in order to not be caught in the crossfire should the Egyptian government also decide to take up the law. In general, the dreaming community all but diminishes - both the extractors and even the entertainment industry of dream arcadists deciding to take everything further underground and stay low until they figure out where the world stands on the use of dreams.
Four years later, it's still an uneasy environment. The United Nations has yet to come to a decision and pass any regulations other countries can follow up on, though the US and the UK both have outlawed any aspect of "dream technology," even as a defense. The majority of extractors are low on work because no one wants to take the risk of hiring them, though arcadists are slowly rebuilding their own separate community, primarily based in Dubai. As for Eames, ever since the government's ability to link him back to his military identity and then extrapolate his presence in the mind crime industry, he's been a wanted man in England for both illegal dreaming and for deserting years ago under the guise of a false death after being sent back out on the field post the closure of Project Somnacin.
It has, considerably, slowed Eames down. While the dreaming community once offered itself as a somewhat safe haven for a certain brand of thief, it has now been split up into different distrustful factions and the arcading community. The arcadists have generally taken to offering Eames certain positions due to his ability to forge and provide entertainment, but Eames simply doesn't like participating in things that seem so unchallenging to him. However, the small groups of extractors that do remain struggle to find work in the first place, nor do they want to hire Eames due to his involvement with the initial contract that blew the lid off mind crime in the first place. Eames has turned somewhat bitter of it all, jaded in people and in losing his place in a criminal circle he was once top dog in. He for the most part has given up on dreams, instead turning to his former work in forgeries, plating, and lower tier con work to continue to attempt to make a living. Primarily he seeks to rebuild his old havana lifestyle before he gets too old to keep up with the fast pace of the world.
personality:
Being a professional conman, however, leaves Eames' best interests out for himself. In the original script, when Cobb suggests that Eames would never turn him into Cobol, the forger is offended and quickly corrects him. The only reason he does not end up turning in Cobb in exchange for the price on his head is that Cobb comes to him with a suitably better offer: inception. Taking the job provides Eames with another chance to successfully plant an idea on someone's mind and actually have it stick, with the side bonus of a sum of money that you can't just bat an eyelash at. Even with this reward in mind, as soon as the job turns sour due to the fact that Fischer's subconscious has been militarized and Eames' is faced with a greater risk than any of the teammates (aside from Yusuf and Cobb) had originally thought, he immediately wants out. The possibility of monetary gain and the pride of accomplishment don't outweigh the idea that, should he die in the dream, his mind will be turned into "scrambled egg." The circumstances are no longer under any sense of control, and Eames wants nothing to do with it. He has to be coerced back into going through with the inception - only because the projections will inevitably get to them if he stays in Yusuf's level, and he's too much an integral part of the job for the other members to have a chance of success without him. He has little empathy for Cobb by the end of the job, as when they are ultimately faced with the idea of failure once more his only remarks are "So that's it, then? We've failed." and "It's not me who doesn't get back to my family, is it?" His regret lingers not in his inability to help Cobb get back to his family, but in the fact that he wouldn't get to see what would occur between Fischer and his father in the strongroom.
Eames is, notably, incredibly relaxed. He speaks in a lazy, almost matter of fact drawl, interjecting dry humor every now and then regardless of whether or not the situation calls for it. His rebuttals in banter are never delivered scathingly, but are instead direct with certain amounts of teasing in the inflection of his voice, focused much less on sarcasm and much more on subtle hints of mockery. Even when angered, he doesn't raise his voice - instead, he points out the faults of the situation with enough focused intensity for the subject of his emotion to easily hear the anger in the tone of his voice rather than his voice bouncing off the walls in echo of a shout. Violence, for Eames, remains in his sense of quiet and pointedness, directed only where it needs to be - exemplified most by his style of fighting. He brawls without the sense of chaos, instead using violence to its most efficient motions. He isn't cruel. For all of his subtle amounts of teasing, his out-for-himself attitude, and his pure enjoyment in watching Yusuf repeatedly tip Arthur's chair over, there is little need for prolonged torment. He's the first to go for a gun in order to shoot Saito to remove him from the dream after he was shot in the chest by the projections. He's not driven by any sense of compassion for Saito, rather instead perhaps a sense of morals that relates back to his desire for efficiency. To Eames, the fact that the man is a tourist and, ultimately, their monetary benefactor means that he doesn't belong in the dream to begin with, so why continue his agony?
Eames is confident and self-assured, but not overly so. He can observe himself just as well as he observes others, and is more than aware of his own faults and what he needs to work on - particularly for a job. He can talk himself through any problems he may be having with a forge without a sense of pride getting in the way. In terms of personal faults, however, he can't exactly be bothered by what others think of him. He has his gambling and his way of life that may be perceived as selfish, and he knows he is professional and useful in jobs for mind crime as well as outside forgeries. His lifestyle isn't open for critique, because as soon as you begin molding your personal life to the way others wish you to be, you are no longer your own person - you've, essentially, forged yourself into whatever mold someone has created for you. Business is one thing - you have to be able to work well with others to ultimately complete a job, after all, and he can well enough grit his teeth and bear it if the payout is higher than the cost - but personal affairs are something else entirely.
Eames is constantly aware of his surroundings. When your livelihood depends on what you can note about those around you, your natural state is to be hyper aware of these things. His eyes tend to shift from subject to subject, taking the whole image in at first before looking for the small details that allow for the stability of the larger picture - anything from whether or not you tap your pen in nervous behavior to the rock of your heels in impatience. He wants to know those who are new to him - not exactly to the extent of what your favorite color is or your preferred genre of movie, but the things that stand of importance to Eames like whether or not you bite your nails or just the skin around it.
Which, more or less, brings attention to how Eames deals with people themselves. Eames is certainly not the most genuine of people - he's hyperacute and observational, and tends to hone in on someone's motivations first rather than any outreaches of a relationship (friendship, acquaintanceship, so on and so forth). His interactions with people over the years, his work within the mind crime industry, and his lifestyle as a criminal in general have led him to be on the more jaded side of things when it comes to people and their place in their own lives versus his. He's not really sympathetic toward the causes of people he doesn't have a close bond with - when he speaks of Fischer and his uncle's problems, it's more-so like describing a soap opera rather than an actual thing, or something that has any effect on him personally. For the most part it's a side effect of being able to see through bullshit, considering he makes his living out of bullshit to begin with, he doesn't trust easily as a general rule and it makes it hard to get past his somewhat superficial exterior to get to any extention of what the "real Eames" might consist of. At the beginning of any interaction, he wants to know people as far as their usage to him, not necessarily out of personal investment in their well being; in this way he also prevents putting himself in a situation of being used or manipulated in turn.
It isn't to say that Eames is completely incapable of forming relationships on a whole, however. It's just a matter of him choosing to believe you're worth it and, in turn, worth expressing himself with. There's sort of a risk that comes with any movement in interaction beyond just acquaintences and it takes a lot for Eames to be willing to indulge that risk, particularly when the stakes are so high when it comes to his sort of lifestyle. However, just because he doesn't make close friends easily doesn't mean he's a lonely old bastard - it would be unrealistic to think such a social creature as Eames is doesn't have his own core group of people he can get meaningful interaction from - it's just a matter of it being ultimately superficial or worth something more to him beyond observation.
Eames has feelings, thoughts, opinions, values, even an entire life outside of just the dream - he's not stoic nor completely aloof just because he also happens to be criminal; he falls under no true stereotype. He's able to put aside these things, however, when something has to be done and a small amount of compartmentalization is necessary. In Tom Hardy's own words, Eames doesn't dwell on personal issues when he's in the moment - rather he puts them on the backburner and has the sort of driven focus to aim for the things that need to be accomplished and ultimately what he desires. He doesn't let life, as it were, drag him down when he's trying to live it. In this way he can appear rather flippant or obtuse, especially concerning other people, but for Eames there is a time and place to deal with separate things or let them resolve on their own, a viewpoint that can definitely clash with other people who simply can't put aside something as natural as worry.
Not that any of this is really apparent to those who interact with him. Eames is incredibly subtle in all nature of things and knows how to work the term "image-management" like it's his middle name. While Eames really just presents himself as an easy, pina colada cool sort of guy when he's in a relaxed environment and has no need to be something he's not (like in the job environment), he can very easily shift around his usual responses, quips, et cetera depending on who he's talking to. If there's something he needs to tone down about himself to get a person to like him better in order to get to some higher goal, he has no problem doing it, particularly when probing for information whether it be out of a projection or any regular joe. He's not the kind of person who would consider this sort of acting to be detrimental to his own core self - he has himself versus the self he presents in order to manipulate and gain trust as entirely different beasts, the former he keeps constant and the latter he lets be fluid if need be. His ability to act when forging people in a dream is something that doesn't leave the dream; it can be used to con, to emotionally manipulate, to get what he wants, to obtain information, to gain any sort of advantage, or even just to diffuse a situation and avoid getting his own throat slashed. It's not a matter of pride, it's a matter of survival - and Eames would do just about anything to ensure his own survival, white lies meaning very little to him when he's so comfortable with who he is as a person. That part is, as previously stated, not open for change - but everything else and superficial things to get him what he wants are completely variable depending on the situation. Being malleable is something one has to rely on when playing at the mindcrime game or really just any "underground" lifestyle to begin with - you can't always be top dog, and you have to learn how to play well with others if you want to reap any benefits.
Just as well, in combination of everything above, Eames definitely knows which card to play and when to just fold early. He's not the sort of man who needs to be completely in charge - he's more than happy to just provide direction and advice from the background and let the group coordinate and carry it out. He has the capacity to be a leader but he just isn't the sort to step up and take ownership of it it - he knows where his strengths and weaknesses are, and much prefers to bounce back and forth with his teammates as long as he has freedom to stretch his limbs in the areas he is specialized in: subjects of dreams and which buttons you generally want to push at. Even then, though, he appreciates input and is willing to edit and revise his initial assumptions as new information comes in - but, ultimately, Eames knows the mind is a delicate thing, and he needs time to handle it, hence his aggravation when Cobb severely limits his time with Fischer when forging his godfather Browning. As a result, the interaction between Eames-as-Browning and Fischer might not have been on part with Eames' usual standards - he had to guide and push Fischer to a certain direction ( and in turn lose a lot of his subtlety with the forge and con ) rather than let everything progress more naturally, though later on Fischer's own paranoia and Cobb's help as a superior, quick-thinking extractor takes care of the manipulation that needed to be improvised.
In the end, Eames is really just an older gentleman seeking to live his life as he sees fit with a bit of illegal activities to supplement his income - someone who has no intention of backing down in the face of what life throws at him, nor very interested in losing his own personal spark and peculiar brand of ethics and conduct. You either love him or you hate him, and Eames doesn't really care which one you choose.
abilities/powers:
In addition, with his hinted military experience comes a know-how around weaponry, particularly around the big guns. He's a pretty good shot around pistols, assault rifles, and grenade launchers, decent fist fighter, and has experience with bombs - and also fancies skiing while dealing with these things! He also has basic experience with first aid - particularly how to operate an AED, which isn't totally very common knowledge unless you. You know. Look at the pictures or whatever. Placement of the pads is important, you know.
In dreams, Eames has the capability to "forge" a different physical identity and then act the personality to match it - a form of identity theft useful in the dreaming community for emotional manipulation, distraction, coersion, or pleasurable company. The use for them is pretty flexible, overall, and they themselves are flexible - Eames included. He's subtle about it, but he is able to pick up on people on a critically observant manner, though he has every capacity to be wrong or lead astray as well. Eames has a pretty solid ability to read people on a whole, but he's no mind reader nor empath, so he has his margin of error just like any other guy.
first person sample:
x,
sorry for the late check-in. You know how sticky it is to find working internet during monsoon season on this side of the mountains ? 2x the effort, i deserve some sort of remark on my willingness to keep in touch but save the monetary supplementation until I get things squared on my end.
Anyway regarding E Ive been hearing thru the grapevine and also regular televised news you really should keep up that its being discussed for EU on a whole not just the Queen's house so Id suggest sticking to southern hemisphere for now. I know Humming is looking for a chemist so you can outsource there for at least an 8 month grant.
Let me know what you decide.
consider that carrier pigeon might be more efficient than email at this point. possible investment ??
Alternatively, there is also this thread, but the Eames there is not an AU version and has had about a year's worth of development, so it might not be the most appropriate.
third person sample:
Just enough to do the work but not enough to carry it out, to slash their tires or whatever it is they suspect his aim to be at the end of the day. Eames isn't sure how his picture in the dreaming community ended up being such a silly one, as though he was the reason that Cobb got caught, that everyone's had to hide a little more under their hoods these days. It is very much, he decides, personal - a personal insult, affront, a personal block to his work, the payout he deserves. He's tumbled, it seems, from top (and most expensive) forger on the dream market to counselor, no matter how much the arcadists want to offer him - a pretty girl here, a game character there, it's just the sort of thing Eames doesn't do any longer, not since he was first starting out, before they knew how far visual manipulation could take them.
He took it anyway, the portfolio. He needs to get paid, after all, with half of his accounts being locked off from access or that he simply can't get to without the hounds breathing down his neck. Admittedly he's lost more than he ever imagined he might, both to the complications of being a wanted man and ultimately to some of the tables in Dubai, errant methods to spend his energy on that's left him a little deep in the pit. A job is a job and Eames is in the position - they all are - of being unable to truly keep to any sense of pickiness. It takes enough to suss out which jobs are legitimate and which are traps waiting to happen, the integral network that was once theirs now being fragmented and scarce ever since the leak.
Eames has to admit, though - even if it was the route no one wanted Fischer to take, he certainly has proven himself as his own man; much to Mister Saito's dismay, if recent stock trends are anything to by. Did their inception really fail with the reveal of Fischer's compromised subconscious? There's no way to tell anymore, how much was their work and how much was the mind simply twisting an idea naturally into something more coherent for the attached personality to follow. Their knowledge of inception had never been truly understood and followed through on from the beginning, just errant trials and errors.
But then, that had all been the fun part, hadn't it? Eames hates lamenting the past, finds it useless and unnecessary, but acknowledges its importance in his present, different changes for different maps, one ending versus another. He refuses, though, to accept this - side jobs away from the greater picture, a steadily draining money source - as his end. This is hardly the person he's ever intended to be, settling for what he can get instead of taking what he wants, being the figurehead of an unfair distrust - if he wanted anyone to distrust him, he would bloody well give them reason to, not simply be part of something that failed.
He gets off the couch to travel into his sequestered kitchen for a drink, and by then it's already decided - no more small time work, nothing meek just for the sake of steadiness. It's been a long enough time spent off of his mark and it's time to reclaim something that belongs to him - not any "glory" to being well known, not any gathering of pride, but instead a comfortable, relaxed life that was his for so long, where living day to day didn't translate into stress over something as inconsequential as a mixture of boredom and needing to find work.
Go big or go home, and Eames isn't ready to submit to someone else's attempts at limiting his own capabilities.
It's simply time to change tactics.
case no: randomize it!