Profile

[blesseddumbfuck]

User Name/Nick: Rycca
User LJ: On File
AIM/IM: On File
E-mail: On File
Other Characters: Severus Snape, The EMH, Randal Graves, Sarah Harding, and Rooster Cogburn

Character Name: Levi bar Alphaeus who is called Biff
Series: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
Age: 33
From When?: Just after the end of the novel.

Inmate/Warden: Warden
Item:

Abilities/Powers: Biff knows Kung Fu and some Jew-do (no, I'm not misspelling that.) He also has the Gift of Tongues, apparently allowing him to speak and understand languages. (In the novel, it is only shown that this allows him to speak Spanish and English, but the assumption can be made.) Without the Gift of Tongues, he knows Chinese, Aramaic, Sanskrit, and very poor Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

Personality:

One of Biff's most defining features is his lust for life. Compared to Joshua's reserved, cheerful, childlike manners, Biff seems almost a caricature. He has a fantastic sense of humor and is quick to smile, jovial and fun-loving. He cares about the people around him and rarely dislikes anyone. There must be some major reason or incident for him to work up hatred for anyone, as with the cases of Jakan (who married Maggie) or Judas.

Biff was raised in a very strict Jewish society, though it's presented in the book that he behaves in this society the way modern children would behave being raised in a strictly Christian community: it's there, it's how things work, some of it's applicable. For example, Biff was always terrible about committing the "Sin of Onan" (masturbating), and would have to cleanse himself almost daily in the mikveh - which should mean that he would have been required to avoid people all day because he was unclean, but then nothing would ever have gotten done. Obviously, not the most practical of punishments or rituals. However, he was aware when things were "unclean" (such as Josh resurrecting lizards by putting them in his mouth), and loved to point out graven images. In later life, Biff slowly converted to Josh's new codes of conduct, and doesn't exactly keep kosher anymore. He loves bacon. However, there are some rules of Christianity that Biff doesn't follow that were included specifically because of him - specifically, Joshua said that sleeping with a divorced woman was adultery. Biff did it anyway. Other views from Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism have been incorporated into his belief system because of his extensive travels.

On the subject of relationships, Biff was very close with Joshua; they were best friends and veritably inseparable. When Joshua was killed, Biff fell into a spiral of rage and grief which caused him to murder Judas Iscariot and subsequently commit suicide. Joshua isn't a sore subject for Biff, however. He loves to talk about him, and will do so at length. What is a sore subject is anyone who sympathizes with Judas, or suggests Joshua isn't or wasn't the Messiah. He won't hesitate to smite them right in the mouth. As for Maggie (Mary Magdalene), Biff is madly in love with her - what he calls "little-boy love" and the "cleanest pain". Love without lust or passion - though he does feel those, too. While he is (and has been) capable of falling in love with other women, Maggie is always The One. Biff is a bit of a romantic and in the past has fallen in love and planned to marry Maggie, Joshua's mother (Mary of Nazareth), and a concubine named Tiny Feet of the Divine Dance of Joyous Orgasm (or simply "Joy"). At one point, he had them ranked numerically: Maggie as his first wife, Joy as the back-up wife, and Mary as the second back-up wife. Of course, he never married.

Due to his close friendship with Joshua, Biff was very debauched in his lifetime. Joshua was forbidden to have sexual intercourse, so Biff had as much as possible and then described it to Josh. The result, of course, is that Biff is somewhat oversexed, overindulgent, and weak-willed. In one instance, Biff slept with a toothless old crone because the monastery he lived in didn't allow anything except accidental "nocturnal emissions" and she was the first woman he ran across. Later in their travels, he became well-acquainted with the Kama Sutra (though many of the positions he learned were probably invented by the prostitute he frequented so she could get chores done while doing business with Biff). All of this behavior, added to his feelings for Maggie and his later disregard for Joshua's new rules for moral conduct, suggest he has no problem with infidelity if he can justify it.

Biff is very inventive; with the help of a Roman guard, he orchestrated Joshua's crucifixion so that it would appear the Messiah was dead, but when he was only under the effects of a poison which induced paralysis. In another instance, he comes up with a scheme to rescue children from being sacrificed to Kali in Kalighat (Calcutta) by dressing himself as the goddess herself. Of course, his schemes never seem to succeed quite the way he plans them - Joshua was killed when a legionnaire threw a spear at him, and not a single one of Kali's followers believed he was Kali. According to the novel, he invented sarcasm (and copyrighted it) as well as coffee-with-cream, matches, and the concept of gravity.

He also has a flair for the dramatic (or over-dramatic, depending on who you ask): when he wanted time alone in the bathroom to read the Bible without Raziel's knowledge, he tried to misdirect the angel by strangling him while screaming about how he hadn't had sex in 2,000 years and needed to masturbate. He's quite intelligent but, to put it bluntly, he behaves like a dipshit.

As a warden, Biff will be the sort to try different techniques until something seems to work. He might also be a bit of a failure as a warden, because there will be some techniques that he'll be trying that are obviously just for shits and giggles, such as teaching his inmate Kung Fu (the wrong way) or making stand for hours in the snow on the deck with the intention of becoming invisible. Things which serve absolutely no logical purpose other than to entertain Biff. He does have his serious moments and will buckle down once he realizes this is someone's soul he's screwing with.

His reaction to the Barge will be one of excitement and amazement. He'll enjoy the floods more than everyone else seems to, and will probably enjoy many of the ports, as well. It should be noted that, if he learns Judas was aboard and graduated, he will have a bit of a breakdown. He'll want to talk to everyone involved in Judas's rehabilitation and probably start questioning the Admiral's judgment and motivations. This could result in several weeks or months of total resentment towards the other wardens and unwillingness to do anything for his own inmate because he won't see the point. If the man who betrayed the Messiah could be rehabilitated in only a few years, the system must be broken. The way to fix this, of course, is for him to find out Judas was from a play and not his Judas.

History:

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff is basically an autobiography. Writing Biff's history would be to give a synopsis of the novel.

Synopsis of the novel.
Wikipedia Synopsis

Sample Journal Entry: [From Dear_Mun]

Mundane, I like the idea. Generally, that is. You could use a hand with the details.

Who's this guy? What, Tom Cruise wasn't available for icons? I think I look like Tom Cruise. At the very least, Christian Bale. Throw me a bone.

Why would you choose icons based on "derp faces", anyway? What's a "derp"? I have the Gift of Tongues and I don't know this word.

Hey, and this blesseddumbfuck thing has to stop. Josh wasn't talking about me. He was talking about other dumbfucks. Possibly fucksticks, too. I'll have to ask Jesus if there's a difference between the two.

The hotel Jesus. Obviously I can't ask Josh.

So where are we going?

You don't know?

Put me on the Barge with everyone else. There are dead people there. I'm a professional mourner, you know. I sing great dirges. Here, listen:

Sorry you're dead and were criminals, and now you're on a boat in the middle of nowhere, la-la-la, because if you hadn't been criminals you wouldn't be on a boat, la-la-la, I guess you shouldn't have stolen money or killed people or committed genocide or been vampires, boom-shaka-laka, But you'd still be dead either way so I hope you killed someone interesting, la-la-la.

Come on, you know the words!

Hey, wait, is Maggie coming?

...Don't "oh look, a seagull" me!

Sample RP:

Biff sat at the table and stared down at his plate, eying the mishmash of cheeses, grains, and meats. There was no way he would be able to separate all of this. While he had spent a good portion of his adult life learning to live with bacon (and enjoying it, for that matter), there was still the ingrained social anxiety of taking his dairy and meat at the same meal - and eating pork. Macaroni with ham and cheese seemed like it might be just a little more than Joshua was talking about when he started advocating bacon.

This was definitely not a kosher meal.

But it looked delicious. It looked so temptingly moist and yellow and spirally. The smell of it was almost overwhelming. Even the name sounded wonderful. Mac and cheese.

He glanced around to get a good idea of what was going on in the dining hall (and who was watching), then discreetly began nudging the chunks of ham to the side of the plate with his fork. Had his mother seen this, she would have smote the side of his head. No one here seemed to care.

He tucked in to the remains of the meal, ignoring the small pile of ham cubes on the rim of the plate and focusing on the rest of the dish. Josh would definitely have understood. Chinese food on his birthday, mac and cheese (possibly with ham) on Biff's.

Special Notes: