KILLIAN, kaiko takahashi

[kaiko takahashi killian]

~~Your faith was strong but you needed proof

[KAIKO TAKAHASHI KILLIAN]

Miyavi

~~You saw her bathing on the roof


BEHIND THE MASK

hey there, i’m [twitch] and i’m a pretty awesome [chick]. i’ve been rocking it out for years and i’m just happy to be here. if you’d like to chat with me try [pm] or hey… go check out […]

~~Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you


SOME BASICS

Name: Kaiko Takahashi Killian
Nickname(s): Kai is the most common because it’s easy (like ‘hi’ but wth a ‘k’) but his mother calls his Kaitaka (Ki-ta-ka) as going along with the Japanese tradition of nicknames.
Age: 22
Birthday: September 12th 1986
Gender: Male, despite rumors.
Sexual Orientation: sexuality is a very weird thing for him. He’s got a lot of qualities of plenty of different sexualities. He’s a bit of a cross dresser sometimes and likes to strive for the androgyny, the line between boy and girl where nothing exists. He’s affection to everyone and has a fascination with those outside the gender binary. He has limited sexual experience and much prefers kissing and making out to anything else, but he’s had sex with a girl before and a couple guys. He has a thing for his band that isn’t really sexual but isn’t strictly friendship oriented. So he’s a hodgepodge of things. Generally he’ll go with ‘mostly gay’ because that’s easy enough to say and it isn’t necessarily wrong.
Band and Position: Love Manifesto – Lead Guitar and back up vocals

~~ She tied you to a kitchen chair


APPEARANCE

Hair: His hair changes color and style as often as he changes his underwear (which he changed with the typical frequency). Naturally he has dark hair. He crops it in a weird way that involved shaving the sides of his hair to peach fuzz. Some of the to of his hair is in braids… he’s cut it shorter a few times but he tends to like it long-ish. He dyes in a whole variety of colors and sticks extensions and stuff in there and loads of gel and glue. His hair tends to make him stick out.

Eyes: He’s got Japanese eyes, almond shaped and dark in color. They tend to have this sad kind of look to them, like he’s seen something he wish he hadn’t, like he knows something. He tends to stare in such a way that makes people feel like he could rip your soul right out through your eyes, maybe use it to repair his own broken soul. When he plays music you can see the intensity in his eyes. You can see it when he smiles too, the brightness.

Height: He’s not overly tall, maybe 5 foot 6 or so. So he’s kind of on the short side, but whatever. He likes his height, figures it’s just right for him. He isn’t too tall to fit well into girls clothes so he’s happy.

Weight: He’s on the thin side… weighting maybe 125 or so, not that he obsesses over weight.

Body: He’s thin but not sickly so, just lean, like skin stretched over muscle and just the right amount of fat. There’s the slight rippling of muscles in his abdomen and arms and his back is smooth, his spine barely visible under the skin but easily felt. he likes his body, it fits him.

Distinguishing Feature: He is fairly heavily tattooed in multiple Japanese characters. Long strings of characters go down his back, his upper chest and arms and fingers are also adorned. He has an array of piercings and gages on his face and ears. He’s a pretty visually distinguishing individual.

Style: He’s got quite the style. He doesn’t really classify it all that much and it varies. He can be very mellowed out some days, when he’s not performing, when he’s relaxed. he could wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, forge the product in his hair and just resemble a fairly normal young man. He tends not to go with this look. He is in favor of bright, loud clothing He’ll wear looser pants tied with a belt, layers of tanks and colored shirts in a weird array of colors. But he’ll wear girl clothing too, bright pink pants under loose leopard print skits, or a floral tank top over tight jeans. It fits well enough with the band and sometimes he’ll come out on stage, decked all in black, trench coat, but something still highly androgynous about his whole look. The androgyny is kind of his thing. He has the sharp features of a female in many ways and he uses that to his advantage. It fits with the ridiculousness of the bands stage show as well.

Other: He came from a bad place and he used to do drugs and cut. He’s got the scars of both of these past written in the skin of his arms in pale white scars.

~~She broke your throne, and she cut your hair


PERSONALITY

KAI’S likes: multicolored anything; energy drinks; smiles; hugs; kisses; affection; silence; forgetting; being with someone and not needing to talk; when people don’t pressure him; popcorn; sugar filled items; soup; the sound of rain; rain in general; snow; reading; his kitten; his band; the music; being understood, actually understood

KAI’S dislikes: judgmental people; homophobes; people who say nasty things about him or his friends; people who expect him to be a certain way because he plays the music he does and dresses the way he does; people being very upset at him; when his band gets upset (which doesn’t happen often, but sometimes it does); being denied affection; being scrutinized; being reminded of his past; returning to bits of his past; not being able to play his music

KAI’S strengths:
-Kai is a very, very good musician and he plays his guitar and even sings very well. He’s a good stage musician as well and he has good stage presence and between him and -- -- Keller they kick ass with live shows, doing their performances
-He’s a pretty resilient sort of person. He’s been through a lot of things in his life, pain and suffering, drugs and all sorts of shit and he’s survived. He strong in that way, emotionally so.
-He’s good at dealing with things, things that piss him off. Angry things. Stress is different, sadness is different, but pure anger he’s really good at. Pure anger he can channel into all sorts of things and remain calm. He’s a vengeful sort but he can do it calmly, calculated, smart.
-He good at making people smile and making them laugh. He liked it to, likes hearing the laughing, knowing that for a moment he made someone’s life a little better. That pleases him. It feels sometimes like it’s the only thing he can do right.

KAI’S weaknesses:
- Drugs to state the obvious. He had a pretty big problem with them a couple years ago. He was young, really young, but he was the sort who grew up fast so not really. It was a bad time for him and he turned to drugs. He’s clean now, but he knows how easy it would be to fall back into it.
- His band and his band mates are his big weakness in the sense that he would do anything for them, anything at all. He loves the band to death and would do anything to hang onto it, to be a part of it forever. And his band mates are his best friends, his family and -- -- Keller specifically. He’s do anything for them.
- He’s closed off and has major problems really connecting with people. He makes superficial connections, smiles and laughter and friendship like that. But real, deep connections are something he mostly only has with his band. He’s a broken sort pf person.

KAI’S goals:
- For the band to make it somewhere, but really that’s a silly goal and he knows it. It’s just like a childish dream, you know. He knows that in the end their fame doesn’t matter as much as the music and everything else they have. But still, fame would be nice.
- He wants to do this with his and forever. Forever as long as they can, you know. He wants to keep this and keep them all together and always have fun with them. Forever. His goal is for forever.
- Kai would love to have a kid, a little girl he could spoil, a little boy he could goof around with. He knows he’s not really fit right now, but he would love to have a kid.

KAI’S fears: He’s afraid of losing the band, desperately afraid of losing the band; he’s afraid of going back to drugs; he’s afraid of being useless; he’s afraid of the band hating him

KAI’S habits/quirks: he tends to dress in girl’s clothes sometimes, which is one of his quirks; he fiddles with his hair when he’s nervous; he likes touching people, like innocent little brushes of fingers on shoulders, that sort of thing.

PERSONALITY:

~~ Brilliantly Musical

Kai is really a great musician, that’s not an exaggeration. He’s good at playing his guitar and he practices all the time. Though he can’t play multiple instruments like some other very brilliant musicians, he can play the guitar and sing very well. Exceptionally well. He has great stage presence as well and really takes the stage with his friend KELLER. He loves listening to music as well, other’s music. He likes watching the shows of the other bands on tour and listening to them play. His musical interest spans all genres and sounds. His music is so much of his life and who he is.

~~ Stuck with his Band

His band is very important to him. They’re his family, despite how clichéd that sounds. The fact is they really are his family. They mean everything to him, they really do. Kai’s family wasn’t really much of a family and he had a bad past and limited support. His band gave him more support that his family every did and Kai loves them all for that. His band gave him a home and a purpose and an outlet and in many ways it saved his life. He’s stuck with his band. He wouldn’t know what to do without it, without them.

~~ From a Dark Place

Kai came from a dark place. He came from a nasty world with dark secrets and bad things happening. He grew up in New York where he was ridiculed for being Japanese, for being weird, for dressing in plaid skirts over jeans, for just being himself. He got ridiculed and threatened and called bad names. He came back to an apartment where his parents were preoccupied with their own darkness and didn’t care all that much for him. They cared only enough. Kai still has a lot of that darkness in him. He still remembers what it’s like to be there.

~~ Broken and Lost

He’s a broken kid in a lot of ways. He’s getting out of a drug habit and it seems like he’s still trying to break his habit. Especially on tour when he’s around other kids, younger then him, who party and drink and shoot up and Kai remembers what that’s like. And despite the fact that it put him in a bad place, he misses it and he wants it back. he forgets sometimes, why he’s here, what’s the point of it all. He’s a broken kid, he really is. He’s got sad eyes when he’s not smiling and he just doesn’t have a lot of hope sometimes. He gets depressed, needs his band to pull him out of it. He writes the band’s songs, writes long songs about sadness and loss and weird and morbid things.

~~ Oddly Clever

He’s a pretty clever individual and he mind works well. he had a sharp and quick thought process that is tainted horribly by cynicism and bad experiences but it works for him. He’s not a stupid individual and he’s calculating. He brings this often very emotionless calculation to pretty much everything he does. He makes a lot of decisions at a distance, not involving his emotions. This gives him problems when he’s dealing with emotional situations. He reads a lot and draws form what he reads quite often. He reads like his listens to music, absorbing everything from every genre and just appreciating it for what it is.

~~ Affectionate and Sweet

He’s an affectionate person. He loves hugs and little kisses on the cheek and just touching another person in a casual kind of way. he adores cuddling and takes any chance he can for affection. He likes the physical closeness he often gets with his band mates, he likes just being there, so close to someone he can hear their heart beat. He’ll squeeze into his band mate’s bunks sometimes, small and flexible and thus easy to fit in a bunk. He just likes there being someone else and he hates sleeping alone. His band gets it, knows the dark place he came form, starved for any kind of real love, and they let him. He smiles when he’s around them, around people he really cares about and he gives presents and strives for other people’s smiles. He’s a sweet kid and if you don’t look in his eyes you couldn’t imagine where he came form.

~~ Closed off and not Trusting

He’s not a trusting individual with the big things. He trusting when it comes to superficial things, smiling and easy going. He’ll sidle up to you, flirt and laugh and kiss your cheek. He’ll make you think that this is what and who he is. But when you try to dig deeper he’ll shut you out, close down and build up his walls, protecting himself. He makes friends but never really lets anyone get to close. Except the band and a few special others. When he does let you in, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll get everything and anything. You’ll get his soul and he’ll sit there and expect you not to destroy him, hope you won’t destroy him and that’s his fault. Some people have screwed him over. He doesn’t have a middle ground, you get nothing or you get it all. Secrets and blackness and light, you get it all.

~~ Loyal to a Fault

When he does make a friend, a real deep down in his soul kind of friend, who’s worth it, he’s absurdly loyal. Like the band. He is terribly, dangerously loyal to the band. He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else with anyone else, it’s just him and them forever. He’s not a violent person and he doesn’t have much of a temper but he’ll seek revenge for his fiends and he’ll stick up for them and he’ll do whatever he needs to do to defend them, to whatever end. Really, to whatever end.

~~ Androgynous

Kai has a very androgynous appearance that he loves and that fits him. He wears skirts, usually in bright colors, on stage and plays with them on, rocking out like he always does. It’s just one of his quirks, like that member of the Boomtown Rats that always played in his pajamas. It’s part of his thing. It’s not just a stage thing though. He’ll wear makeup and nail polish and dress and do his hair in ways that could and usually are considered cross dressing. But then he’ll do the reverse, stick baggy pants and loose shirts on his skinny frame, a ball cap over his multicolored hair. He’ll mix it up, put on a tight shirt over loose pants, a top hat and a tie and brightly colored nails and eye liner. He likes blurring the liens between the genders and when people ask him if he’s a girl or a boy, he’ll shrug and ask ‘does it matter?’ curious, like he really wants to know the answer. He isn’t too concerned. He tends to identify as male, because it’s easier, it matches his parts, but only if it’s necessary. It’s just who he is.

~~ Weirdly Sexual

Kai is a weird one in terms of sexuality because he seems to embrace a lot of different things and aspects. he doesn’t consider himself transsexual, or transgender for that matter, neither do the people close to him. He likes the term androgynous so he uses that a lot. He’s affectionate and though he’s not a virgin, he’s really not all that into sex, not at all. But it’s not really asexuality. He thinks more in terms of like and love and connection and meaning then in terms of sex. he thinks physically, but still on that writer kind of level of symbolism. So he’s not terribly sexually attracted to much of anyone, and he’s physically attracted to people of all different sorts of genders and sexuality and he likes ‘pansexual’ because it refers to everyone, not just those inside the gender binary. But he generally just uses the prefix pan because it leaves the sexuality part out. Than there’s the thing he has for his band. Mostly it’s just a confusing hodgepodge of a whole lot of things that are defiantly ‘not straight’ so he usually goes with ‘gay’ because it makes things easier and it’s not really a lie.

~~ Oddly Ambitious

He’s a weird kind of ambitious sort, Kai. He’s got a lot of ambition for the band, for them to become something, but he also knows it doesn’t really matter in the end, what they become. So long as they’re together. he wants things, Kai, wishes and dreams for them but he knows in the end he needs to work for it all and he does. It’s just sometimes he doesn’t quite know who to achieve all he wants to achieve.

~~ Epitome of the ‘Band Gay’

The reports tend to make a big deal about the supposed ‘band gay’ that the boys from Love Manifesto have. They put it in their stage shows, in the gender bending, if -- -- KELLER playing shows in drag, in Kai’s skirts, in the dynamic between the guitarist and the singer. Kai and his friend have a weird stage dynamic that involves a lot of playing to the fag hag fan girl’s fantasies, playing to each other, singing into the same mike, occasional, casual groping on stage, kisses that never touch their lips. Mostly it’s -- -- KELLER and Kai but not always. KERRY’s there too, playing his bass, smiling as Kai goes down on his knees, playing up to the younger musician. KAST is a bit removed, hidden by his drum set but he’s always included when they talk to the press, get they’re picture taken. It’s a weird thing, a weird dynamic, but they’re best friends. Kai though… he has a real thing for the band. Maybe just because it’s them, all of them, maybe ‘cause of the fucked up fanfiction, he doesn’t know or care. he knows he had a thing for -- -- KELLER for a while, his best friend, this little kid who saved his life. But then the others came along and they started playing and they were comfortable and trusting and they were them and Kai kind of has a thing for -- -- KERRY and -- -- KAST and… well he doesn’t make a big deal of it even though it’s a huge deal. He just keeps it to himself, the only thing (the ONLY thing) he keeps form the band… and he deals.

~~ And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah


BACKGROUND

Mother’s Name: Takahashi Cho (Americanized it would be Cho Takahashi)
Mother’s Age/Location/Occupation: 40/ New York City/ waitress

Father’s Name: Matthew Robert Killian
Father’s Age/Location/Occupation: 56/ New York City/ defense attorney

Sibling(s) Name(s): none… poor kid’s an only child

Pet(s): a black kitten that he snuck on tour (well not really since everyone else knew about it) who stays in her little cage except when they’re around. Her name is Kumiko.

Any Other Significant Family: The band really… the band has been his family for a very long time… pretty much the only family he has left really.

HISTORY

He was born in Japan though he never really knew what it was like to live there. His mother left with him (she was young, only 18 and already a mother) when he was still a little baby, just over a year old, tiny and wiggling. She wanted to escape her husband, escape to the Untied States where no one could hurt her anymore. She took her little baby, her little son, Americanized their names (surnames go first in Japanese) and moved to New York. It was a city of opportunity. Opportunity to succeed and opportunity to fail, fail horribly.

Cho and her child survived for a time on their own. When Kai was just old enough to remember things was when Cho met Matthew. He was a defense attorney, 16 years older than Cho, already well established and successfully, falling bard for this pretty little thing who barely spoke English. They fell in love in many ways and married soon after that. Kai always knew Matthew as his father.

His family was not horribly dysfunctional, they just weren’t terribly helpful. His father was always gone and his mother, though happy, was often gone as well. Neither really knew how to deal with the smart, but odd little child who liked to dress in girl’s clothes and paint his nails and sing. They let him do what he wanted but gave him odd looks and he started to hide his odd behavior. He began playing guitar at a young age, expressing himself and feeling wonderful. He escaped into his music in a way.

He was picked on in school, told he was horrible for being different. He was told nasty things for just being who he was and he was only a child. His family though not something that inspired fear, it also did not inspire the feeling of being welcome or accepted. When he told his mother about the bullying she simple told him, in broken English that was getting better every day, that if he wasn’t so strange he wouldn’t be picked on. It was not helpful.

He met his friend -- -- KELLER in school and they became friends. He was one of the few people that let Kai be who he was, admired him for it even and they played music together, finding common ground in that in the beginning. They were great together. Kai didn’t tell his family about his friend, afraid that something would snatch this boy away or something. It was incredible because the boy was only a year below him, a result of Kai starting school late and being held back in grade school because he wasn’t all that great at speaking English. Japanese was much easier for him and it was what his mother spoke. So he was held back despite his general intelligence and so he was only a year ahead of KELLER when they met. That year was kind of important though, especially when Kai moved to high school, leaving KELLER behind for one more year of middle school. But they stayed friends, met outside of school, usually over at KELLER’s house.

Around the time when Kai was moving into high school, wishing his friend was there with him, was the time he began questioning the basic makeup of himself. He knew he was an odd one, the kids beat that into him all the time. He played it out in his music and his words and his voice. But somehow that wasn’t really an answer and he wondered more about what and who he was. He worked it out with his friend, who was always accepting and walked him through it, the idea that he wasn’t straight.

That was around the time when he realized that there was a high probability that he loved KELLER on some deeper kind of level but he didn’t tell the other boy this, still afraid of being left alone, like he was left alone and behind at home. He liked belonging with someone and he was terrified of losing it. Especially when he and KELLER began talking of a band in the practical sense, not just in silly dreams and wishes, but as a possible reality. He wouldn’t want to mess that up.

He got into bad things around that time too, sinking into a depression despite his friend, falling without anybody able to save him. He had no support at home and KELLER wasn’t strong enough to hold him above water for any lasting period of time. It was bad for Kai. He fell into drugs quickly. He stuck with pot for a bit, something that he did with his ‘friends’ (merely kids who were too stoned or too indifferent to care much about him) around the school yard. That was enough for him for a while. He still had his music, concentrated on it and in a way, that was his other drug. He smoked too, regular cigarettes.

He and KELLER started the band, for real, when KELLER was 16 and Kai was 19, pushing his way through his last year of high school, 2 years older then the rest of them. KELLER was a junior and he and Kai were actually forming a band. They pulled in these two other guys and Kai trusted them instantly. he was falling fast now so his judgment was impaired. He had started cutting, hiding the thin scars from even KELLER.

Pot wasn’t enough for him anymore and he had a hell of a trip, sliding down into a bad hole. It started with Ketamine, mixed with his pot. he would go clubbing too, running desperately away form something that no one really knew what it was. He moved out of his apartment, making his family relieved but not much else. He dropped Acid a couple times, got into cocaine and he was falling way to fast for anyone to catch him at this point. They knew know, the band. They were playing shows and Kai was always sober for them, strong and playing as well as he ever did, but he was such a broken kid, wanting to escape his own damn skin.

He took a bunch of downers, xanax, and alcohol, knowing he was fucking himself over, killing himself. None of it was enough anymore, it just wasn’t enough. He was in his crappy little apartment, sad and lonely, without enough strength to even say goodbye to the band. Then KELLER comes by, suspicious or whatever, opens the door to the apartment (he had a key, they all did) and found Kai on his bed, dieing, speech slurred, telling KELLER to go away, let him go. The boy called 911, he was rushed into emergency care, he went into rehab a week or so later and that was the end of that, more or less.

They talk about it sometimes, KELLER and Kai, about that night and what it meant and everything. They talked in hushed voice, crammed into one bed because Kai still hated sleeping alone and just wanted to be held and cared for and loved. It’s not a taboo subject because nothing is taboo between them really, not much at any rate. It’s comfortable and it’s slow and it doesn’t hurt Kai, not at all.

So now they’re on tour and Kai’s doing better. He’s clean and he doing okay, well enough. He’s got the music back and he adore that. He living and he likes that too. He likes being on tour, having a purpose, playing with his band.