Timo Rodriguez

*He Says Dead People*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* 'Ships
* Logs

An unassuming drunkard, originally from Texas, who SEES DEAD PEOPLE! Of course he doesn't admit the last part. He's actually pretty open about being a drunkard. Though at least he drinks GOOD booze, so he never smells like cheap whiskey or cheap beer. But he does tend to smell like booze. Aside from his ability to interact with ghosts and spirits, he's also cursed with the ability to gather memories and impressions from objects he touches, which leads him to wearing gloves all the time and covering as much of his body as possible, as well as having a near-neurotic dislike of touching other people. If one can get him to actually acknowledge his gifts, he could really do some good for the normal people, giving closure for departed loved ones, possibly finding lost folks. Then again, that would require him to stop drinking, and... yeah. That's not gonna happen.

## Personality

Timo is a simple guy, despite his complicated abilities. All he really wants is to be left alone by the spirits, and to just be able to live a normal life, a thing which a lot of people take for granted, he feels. The drinking is pretty much just that -- a desire to want to just get the spirits to leave him alone, or at least to be so screwed up he can ignore them. For him, it's better to be a normal drunk than being a weirdo who can talk to dead people.

He dislikes being patronized, due to his parents and their parenting methods. His parents tended to act as though, when he messed up, that it was kind of inevitable because he wasn't their oldest child. None of their children could "measure up" to their oldest, Timo included. But Timo seemed to have it marginally worse, since his parents never really thought he was capable of reaching the bar set by their oldest. It really annoyed him. Thus, in the present, he dislikes when people just give him a pass because "well he probably can't do it anyway". This could probably be used to someone's advantage, in fact. Particularly if one's trying to get him to do something he shouldn't be doing...

Besides that, there isn't really a lot to tell about him. Above and beyond all else, he's really just a normal guy with a very abnormal, supernatural ability that he's never quite been able to come to grips with, and drinking is how he copes (badly) with it. Eventually he will have to stop, or face a very unhealthy life, and possibly an unhealthy death. Then he'll be joining the spirits he wants to stay away from!

Timothy "Timo" Rodriguez was born in southern Texas, the youngest of three kids -- Christopher, Daniel, and himself. He wasn't "the baby", no. In his family it was the oldest, Christopher, who was doted on. He was something of a role model, at least his parents thought so. Whenever Timo got in trouble, it was "Why can't you be more like Christopher?". Well, it didn't take long before he got tired of all that nonsense. He put up with it as long as he had to, 'till he was of legal age to travel, and then moved out. He lived on the streets of Dallas until he managed to score a job at a local fast-food place. He went half-and-half with a string of roommates, but none of them worked out. Most of them were creeped out by him, how he'd always talk to no one, get distracted by nothing at all, and ultimately growl at someone to "go away" but no one was there.

See, Timo had always been able to see ghosts. His mother always noticed him talking to imaginary friends, and claimed to talk to his grandmother after she died when he was very young. And as he got older, this got stronger. At the age of ten he carried on long conversations with "angels". As he got older his abilities grew in scope, and he gained the ability to pick up an object and tell someone what the last few events were that happened in its existence. Problem: He couldn't turn THAT off either!

Eventually he ended up homeless, unable to keep a roommate, and being unable to afford an apartment alone. But he refused to ask his parents for help. Because that would be admitting defeat. He had a friend that let him crash on a couch once in a while, and he took advantage of that when it was cold. And he also discovered something-- it was easier to ignore the ghosts when he was drunk. So he remained on the streets, and stayed as drunk as possible.

His parents always tried to get him to come back, to straighten himself out. But he wouldn't. And after several years of his parents harassing him, Timo decided to part from his family completely. He'd move far enough away that they wouldn't be able to harass him. Besides, maybe he could escape this curse he seemed to have been born with. San Francisco, he figured. You never hear of anything supernatural happening THERE. It would be a place where he could finally relax and not have to worry about all this spiritual BS.

He couldn't have known how wrong he would be.

Timo had it all planned out. He'd move over, get a job at a decently-paying place, save up enough, and go to college. Maybe he could go to college to be a psychologist, even! Take courses at night while he worked, maybe?

Yeah, that fell apart pretty quickly. It wasn't the first day that he got jumped by the ghost of a murdered man wanting to warn his daughter that the murder was coming after her too. He couldn't fight the ghost's commands, and in short order found HIMSELF arrested for the crime. He was later released when he could definitively prove that he wasn't even in the state when the murder occurred. Passing himself off as a psychic, he did help the police find the murderer... but the ghosts didn't leave him alone.

In the end, San Francisco turned out to be more of a hotbed of spiritual activity than Dallas had! So his always-on ghost vision caused him no end of problems... and he was kind of stuck there now. There really wasn't much he could do except bum around the city, staying drunk enough not to see or hear the ghosts. Or at least, drunk enough that he could pass them off as drunken hallucinations.

Logs featuring Timo Rodriguez:

*Coming soon!*