Well hello, boys.

I've been working on these characters Dom Toretto and Brian O'Conner from The Fast & The Furious franchise since, oh, about two weeks ago. Geez, has it been that long? If you know me and my fandoms well, you know that most of them I love to watch, love to read fanfic, but rarely enter into as an active contributor. I think that's primarily because there's already a lot of work done on that fandom, there's whole sites devoted to its fanfic writers with references and summaries and all the homework's practically been done for me. There's no interest to write because most of the things have already been done. That, or the characters are so straightforward that - while interesting - they don't prod me to study them.

There have been only two fandoms I get...for lack of a better description... 'that' feeling about. Both of them offered a wealth of openings for inference, opinion and study. They made the writing interesting. I feel rewarded when other people read my work in those fandoms and say 'yeah, that's totally right,' or better yet, 'Wow, I never thought of it that way!'

If you've been with me on some of my more singleminded and kind of scary romps through the Internet looking for clues (like our roadtrip through the auto databases of the web looking for a Cadillac with just the right tailfins to be Duke's car from the series, falsechaos), you know that I can go to some odd lengths for a fandom I'm hardcore committed to. I don't get that feeling too often - in fact, I've only had it twice.

Actually. Make that three times, now. I've been doing my homework, and I've got 'that' feeling again. The one that previously drove me to think, write, draw, live and breathe a character or set of characters.

Starting with birthdays, this time. You're free to think I'm cracked, but I want to know the boys' birthdays so I can get some more insight. Only one of them has a birth year listed in his Wiki, and that's Dom.

Dom was born in 1977. That makes him 32 during the events of Fast & Furious, and since the original movie debuted in 2001, that would have made him 24 during the events of The Fast & The Furious.

I researched the personality types of the zodiac, and narrowed him down to Scorpio. With that in mind, using my favorite book for characterization ideas, I narrowed him further down to the Scorpio-Sagittarious Cusp. This puts his birthdate between November 19 and November 24. I chose November 21, because it's divisible by 7, and that man's got a lucky streak a mile wide.

So, according to me, Dom's birthdate: November 21, 1977

Brian was harder. First, no birthday either, and this time no year. So, I looked at Vin Diesel's birthyear, which is 1967. Compare that to his character's age - Dom is a decade younger than he is. That seemed reasonable, so I tried it with Brian and his actor, Paul Walker. No dice. At the time of the first movie, if Brian was ten years younger than his actor, he'd be 18. He's a member of the LAPD, and the LAPD requires entrants to be at least 21 years of age with a high school diploma, GED or college/university degree. Also, academy training is required and takes about six months, and it's highly unlikely that they'd send a green cop undercover unless he showed some serious talent for it. My guess is that Brian is 23 in the first movie, which gives him time to finish his academy training and get some experience under his belt before he takes the job.

My guess as to Brian's birth year: 1978

His personality is not subtle, but also not something I could easily categorize, so I had to spend more time thinking about it. Brian's overwhelming personality trait is his constant activity. He's restless, and some part of him is almost always in motion. Along with that, when he's lying (and he does it a lot), Brian tends to feed his enthusiasm into the part he's playing, using his emphatic voice, forward posture, abrupt, almost angry motion and long fearless stares to convince others. Part of that is probably adrenaline from fear response, but I think if it was totally desperation he would not be able to speak as quickly and as cleverly as he does during these situations.

Brian also tends toward the same behavior when he's telling the truth, which muddies the waters quite a bit and makes him an unreliable character. He's a young cop with a rap sheet and very little self-respect in the first movie. In the fourth movie he's a young FBI agent with a rap sheet that now includes Aiding & Abetting, and even less self-respect than before. Toretto becomes a goal to strive for - earning back the friendship of this man he so deeply betrayed means Brian's not such a horrible person, after all. In spite of Brian's enthusiasm, he's a cerebral character, able to think coolly even in charged situations. He comes across as the kind of protective, knowledgeable person I'd run to if I was in trouble and needed an answer, although it's just his front.

Example: Brian blows his cover when he calls for a chopper to come and pick up one of Dom's injured teammates after a bad accident. He's staring Dom down, who is punched in the gut with the enormity of Brian's betrayal by the call. Dom is shaking and tense with an internal war over letting Brian continue the call because he's the only one who can save Vince... or leap on him and pound him into the sand. Knowing that Dom's a hair away from quite probably murdering him, Brian continues to stare him down and give the details of Vince's injuries.

Other overwhelming personality factors - Brian's drive to win, over Dom, over the Feds, over Vince for Mia, and on and on.

Taking all of this into account, I think Brian is likely an Aries. Moreover, closer research in the same book where I found Dom's birthday showed Brian to be an Aries II, also known as The Second Decan or "The Week of the Star" That time frame falls between April 3 and April 10. So, I chose April 3.

So, according to me, Brian's birthdate: April 3, 1978

It's a great big fat start.

Also, I've got a couple quick ficbits posted over at bardic_fic. I've hidden all the porn, but the genfic is still publicly accessible without friending the journal.