Profile

As expert an urban explorer as he is a hugger.
witty // reckless // affectionate
Story: | Catband |
Setting: | New York City, 2007 |
Created: | 2003 |
THEO (ESCAPE)
Full Name | Theodore Biswas | Age | 26 | Species | Human |
Graffiti Name | ESCAPE | Birthday | November 25, 1980 | Gender | Male |
Prefers | Theo | Zodiac | Sagittarius | Pronouns | He/Him |
Character Group | Les Revanchistes | Religion | nonreligious | Sexuality | Gay |
Group Role | Bad ideas | Background | Bangladeshi dad x American mom | Relationship Status | Single? |
Day Job | Studio Artist | Birthplace | Washington state | Living Situation | ??? |

"Do you hear yourself sometimes?"
- Ira
The Story So Far...
Theo and his best friend Ira (SAINT) are studio artists by day, and along with their photographer friend Luke (CHIEF), they're graffiti artists and urban explorers by night, prowling the illicit heights and depths of the city with Krylons and a Kodak. If they're unassuming in the daylight, they're as infamous in the darkness as their personas ESCAPE, SAINT, and CHIEF, and the shadowy and mysterious photos of their adventures that Luke posts to his anonymous blog have the city captivated. When they run afoul of the NYPD, they get condemned as public enemies and terrorists, but it gives their adventures the mission they didn't know they were missing.
If it's "terrorists" the police want, the trio newly dubbing themselves Les Revanchistes are more than happy to play the part and give the city a good old New York show.
Of course, for the inseparable artist duo, there may be something else they didn't know was missing, and for Theo, more than a few truths to uncover...
Theo is a friendly motormouth, a heedless daredevil, and the most cheerful terrorist you're likely to meet.
He's witty and wordy and a neverending stream of thoughts comes out of his mouth, which only Ira can ever keep pace with. He's clever-tongued, perceptive, and tactful-- and still, he's a huge pest to his friends, in the most good-natured way possible. He's physically affectionate with everyone, and especially Ira, who constantly and long-sufferingly receives his pestering as the stoic Lucas Duda to Theo's impish Curtis Granderson.
Theo is his own perpetual motion machine, constantly moving and gesturing and all over the place. He's the most eager urban explorer of Les Revanchistes, and will launch himself headfirst into unknown situations and squeeze and contort himself into dangerous spots with abandon and a great sense of adventure but very little sense of self-preservation, to Ira's immense anxiety. He especially loves climbing bridges and high places and looking over the city. Ira is less about heights, but he always goes with him anyway.
Finest Moment
Theo knows Ira probably better than anyone else, and he knows how to handle his bad days without ever making a big deal about it.
Lowest Low
Theo has broken... more than a few bones in his chaotic life. The E.R. staff is never thrilled to see him (and his chatty self) back.
Height: 6'1"/185cm | Build: Wiry, slim |
Eyes: Dark brown | Hair: Brown, slightly receding hairline |
Handedness: Right | Style: Snazzy |
Theo is a stringbean, tall and thin and long-legged and ready to squeeze himself into some tiny crevice down a subway tunnel or in some abandoned building. You could never mistake him for a bodybuilder, but he is stronger than he looks.
He has unkempt brown hair that he never really manages to tame, and though he'll wear "neater" clothing like sweater vests and bow ties in his everyday life, they're never neat: he has too much energy for that, and even at an art show you'll probably find him with his shirt tails untucked and his tie loose sooner rather than later. He wears glasses, and he has more than once broken or lost them on some adventure. At least he has friends to help him out when he does.
When they run tunnels, his clothes aren't much different-- he's too wild not to instantly ruin anything less practical than jeans and a button-down. But he still likes his bow ties.
Theo was born in Washington state and though he and his mother moved to New York after his parents divorced when he was ten, he's a life-long Mariners fan. Unsurprisingly for a kid of the '80s and '90s, Ken Griffey Jr. was his hero, and he and Ira spent many an afternoon in his mom's basement playing Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on his Super Nintendo.
He's a big ol' video game nerd and he and Ira getting into urban exploration as teens is probably not unrelated to a desire to have their own JRPG adventure in real life... but Theo's unlikely to mention that in any interviews about his artistic process.
Theo has a passion for urban exploration that runs perhaps a bit deeper than it does for Luke and Ira-- or at least in a different way. Luke loves the city and its hidden histories and in his anarchic way, subverting authority; and Ira loves making himself into a kind of mythical figure of the literal sub-urb; but Theo loves the heights of the city like a mountain goat, the sights like an eagle, the tunnels and abandoned ruins like a rat. He feels romantic about urban decay in a way that's hard for him to get across to people outside of the subculture, but that he strives to share with the world via his art.
Trivia
Theo played Little League as a kid, and he was actually pretty good: tall, athletic, and spry, though he never went further with it than high school. He was a pitcher until an elbow injury derailed that.
Theo's a painter: he loves to paint cityscapes of the skyline and urban decay, and spends a lot of time scouting high places for the best views-- or the city's depths for anything interesting to paint. His style veers photorealistic-meets-fantasy, and he loves drawing attention to what most people would never notice or see, and bringing his audience a different way of seeing familiar urban sights.
He, Ira, and their other artist friends are based out of the Paper Street Studios, a sprawling, graffiti-covered former warehouse-turned-art studio in Long Island City, Queens.
By night, Theo and Ira are anonymously infamous under their graffiti tags and are collectively known as SAINT/ESCAPE or St./ESC. As a graffiti artist, Theo-- perhaps unsurprisingly, given his tag, ESCAPE-- particularly loves painting interesting things that incorporate the subway tunnels' emergency exits.
Where Ira is more cavalier about how his art sells-- or at least he acts that way-- Theo is high-strung and nervous about his art "making it". His parents love him and are proud of his work regardless, but he has big dreams and visions and he's very anxious about his need to make them a reality. He's no stranger to a good semiannual quarter-life-crisis about where his career is going and if it even matters. Ira's always a calming influence when he's psyching himself out too much, though-- he's his rock-- and even if it's said in Ira's blunt, teasing way, they both know it's exactly what Theo needs.
Guilty Pleasure
In his secret heart, Theo has a whole lot of fantasies of things he'd like to do while urban exploring that are not fit to print here.
Ira (a.k.a. SAINT) Best Friend / Partner in Crime / ???
Theo and Ira have been best friends since their first year of high school, and they're like an old married couple, almost always together and eternally bickering and harassing each other. They seem to have a bottomless well of inside jokes, and they can reliably be found engaging in rapidfire word association jabbering that no one else can understand. They're partners in art, but it's regularly assumed that they're partners in life, too. To everyone's surprise, the two aren't actually dating-- yet-- but their friends have bets on how long it will take the pair to figure it out.
Luke (a.k.a. CHIEF) Good Friend / Partner in Crime
Luke is Theo and Ira's close friend and the third member of Les Revanchistes, a photographer who documents the crew's adventures. He's theoretically the leader, but man of mystery that he is, he wanders and does his own thing a lot of the time, leaving the pair to their own devices. Make no mistake though, any of them would go to war for either of the other two.
Zoë Friend / Studiomate
Zoë is a friend from the art studio they all work at, and along with her girlfriend Sandy, one of the studio Moms. She and Theo are close, and she's keen to hear his wild tales of urban exploration over their morning coffee or tea.
Sandy Friend / Studiomate
Sandy is another friend from the art studio, and along with her girlfriend Zoë, one of the studio Moms. She's closer with Ira, but they're friendly too.
Kat Studiomate
Kat is another art studio friend. Theo doesn't know her as well-- she's fairly quiet-- but they're on good terms.
Coding by hedgemaze, lowkeywicked, & WeltDerAthanasie // See gallery for image credits
Comments