✧ NAME: Talan Zaretti ✧ AGE: 28 ✧ BIRTHDAY: April 15,1989. ✧ GENDER: Male ✧ LOCATION: French Quarter ✧ TIME IN NOLA: About 9 years ✧ OCCUPATION: Manager at Jester’s Ink/Aspiring Architect Apprentice
Mun Note: It’s disheartening I have to put this little note on my character’s bios, however, I’ve unfortunately had them stolen from me too many times now. I don’t want to have to do so, but you will be confronted again if it continues. Thanks!
TW: alcohol, substance mentions
Born to a young teenage couple who knew they were nowhere ready for raising a child in San Antonio, Texas, Talan was put up for adoption. Almost immediately, the bright, bouncing baby boy was taken in by a couple who were unable to have children. He gained an Air Force pilot training instructor for a father and a Texas oil company heiress for a mother. They loved him to pieces, and specifically, his father named him after the Talon planes he’d been known to fly. He didn’t understand the concept of being adopted until his middle years when his parents really mentioned it but in actuality, he didn’t care, he couldn’t see himself as a son to anyone else, and why care if his birth parents didn’t want him or attempt to reach out at all? Even though he could himself, he didn’t have much of a desire to do so.
Luckily, his father had been stationed at a base for his training job so the family wasn’t required to move around, he and his mother both held jobs that constantly required them to be away for hours upon hours. However, they remained determined to be good parents, as often as Talan spent with babysitters and at daycare growing up. He didn’t ever seem to mind though, always happily bringing and showing off the various airplane toys his father would buy for him. Surprisingly enough, he got into the arts and crafts while there as well, his caretakers always praising his art and the talent he truly seemed to posses, but the young boy always shot it down, as he was insistent on becoming an air force pilot just like the adopted father he looked up to.
But when graduating high school, of course he joined the air force as intended, the training was rigorous and difficult, but he loved every minute. In the back of the mind, he’d make his family proud, especially his father. But that all came crashing down right before his eyes, before his training ended, and his big dreams of being the next Top Gun were put to a halt. During one of his final medical examinations, the doctors discovered he actually had HCM. Although it is a condition that is certainly treatable and livable, the diagnosis was a diagnosis and couldn’t be risked out on the front line if called to duty. His chance of a military career was over. Talan was completely crushed, ashamed and angry as it had been all he thought he’d ever wanted to make a living. Even more since the condition could be genetic, it made him despite his biological parents even more, whoever they were. As if that wasn’t enough, while getting things under control, a current relationship crumbling, while Talan ended up distancing himself from friends and family even further, needing the space, a completely new change. Acting on one of his habitual spontaneous impulses, he eventually hopped on the next bus away from San Antonio, sure this was what he needed.
Turning again to alcohol and substance, not wanting to stoop to ask his parents for any help, Talan began conning his way through stop to stop in order to get back. He essentially had no sense of purposely, and quite frankly, couldn’t find it in himself to care either. At a casino at a specific tourist stop, getting tangled up within a high stakes betting game, he nearly got himself caught. He made an instant break away, managing to escape, getting himself on another bus, having no idea exactly where it was headed. All he knew was that when morning broke the next day, he found himself in New Orleans, Louisiana. Surrounded by the electric, lively atmosphere the place instantly gave off, Talan had a feeling he wasn’t going to be leaving for a while. A while eventually became an understatement.
Although as he got himself settled, immersed easily, Talan found himself caught up with the wrong group of toxic people he thought he could consider friends. It was until a near scare of the excess partying building up night after night, he found himself in the hospital, having almost lost himself entirely due to a near OD. In truth, he’d never felt more alone in his life. But not being in his nature, to let things get him down for long, he kept going, continuing to find some semblance of a purpose.
Aimlessly doing some street art graffiti one day, he became discovered by a local manager of prominent city tattoo parlor, who’d ask him to come in and do some trial work, show what he was made of. His creative skills seemed to come back and as a result, the manager took Talan under his wing and he became a steady employee of Jester’s Ink. And when the manager had to leave town for what was presumed to be for good, Talan was left in charge, leaving the shop and the Bourbon street apartment above to him. Discovering the military would cover classes cost, he began some in the study of architectural design additionally. Although Talan thinking he wouldn’t be good enough to go through with it entirely, he put the classes on hold, yet still finds himself going into the topic design books occasionally to work free-lance, but only for himself. Nevertheless, he had a more stable balance to his life in the midst of everything he began taking up, thanks primarily to the tattoo shop opportunity.
Old habits do die hard, but even now with a potential solid romance developing on the horizon with local cop, Ava Sawyer, Talan seems to be distracted with positive things he needed for a while. He still has his fun, but letting things get the best of him would be an even worse mistake than before. He’s made substantial progress, even if he doesn’t necessarily realize it first-hand.
Talan possess a natural affinity for spontaneity, with witty charisma that has no doubt aided him in taking the easy streets in life and usually connecting with others fairly easily. Although never really afraid to speak his mind, it can tend to get him into trouble. With the vibes he gives off of, people don’t really understand all that he’s been through. It takes a certain kind of person to gain his complete undivided attention and trust to be able to do so and get him to open up in that way. What tends to surprise others is that when and if someone takes the opportunity to really understand who he is as a person beneath the primarily care-free surface, is that he does put his mind to a goal, and he does work hard at it with determined intent. It’s just a matter of reaching the heights of personal success without pretense.
TALAN’S FACECLAIM IS NICO TORTORELLA AND IS PORTRAYED BY LIZ.
