Contents 1 Basics 2 Personality/Background 3 Relationships 3.1 Canon 3.2 Paradisa

BasicsEdit

Name: Grencia Mars Elijah Guo Eckener AKA Gren

Fandom: Cowboy Bebop

Journal: both_neither

Played by: Rebecca

Gender: Male

Age: 29

Height: 6'2"

Weight: 172 lbs

Orientation: Homosexual

Occupation: Jazz Musician/Former Soldier

Canon point: The end of Jupiter Jazz pt. II, but before the actual point of death

Loss: His ability to play music

Personality/BackgroundEdit

Gren is an incredibly compelling character for what little is seen and known of him in the series. We first meet him as he plays his saxophone in a lonely bar in the Blue Crow sector of Callisto, where Faye also happens to be drowning her sorrows. The first impression of him is that of an enigmatic and friendly person, surprising upbeat in contrast to the dour, cold climate and population and the town. Gallantly he gives her his coat and cautions her against the attention she was attracting in the apparently womanless sector she had found herself in.

Faye shakes it off and goes looking for trouble, only to be unwillingly rescued when Gren suddenly appears. He takes her back to his apartment where they talk briefly. While he goes to shower, Faye is left alone in his apartment. The space, though rather poor, is filled with all that seems important to him – music, and his memories. The photos blanketing his walls give the glimpse of a perpetually smiling Gren, surrounded by family and friends. Startlingly, Faye catches sight of an odd photo, torn down the middle and repaired, of the man dressed as a soldier with none other than Vicious beside him.

Vicious calls at just this moment to arrange the meeting for the drug deal that Gren himself had requested. She goes to confront him, only to discover Gren’s shocking secret. He’s no longer entirely a man, nor entirely a woman.

He goes on to explain how he served in the war on Titan alongside Vicious. Though little is known about the war, including neither the nature of the conflict nor why exactly either of the men was involved, it is clear that it was a brutal and bloody affair that had lasting effects on both. Calmly, Gren tells Faye about he was arrested after returning from the war on the pretense of being a spy. He was told it was Vicious who had testified against him, resulting in the collapse of his sanity due to insomnia, presumably caused by nightmares regarding the inexplicable betrayal by a man he trusted and regarded highly. He was given a dangerous and addictive experimental drug to treat it which threw off the balance of his hormones, causing him to develop a feminine figure. Somehow he managed to escape prison to Callisto where he would later meet Julia. She learned, as Faye does, that Vicious had given Gren a tiny music box on Titan. Julia urged him to open it, revealing a solar transmitter, solidifying to Gren the idea that Vicious had set him up. The drug deal was to be a final confrontation and a chance to find out once and for all if it was true.

It is only here that Gren shows even a small amount of overt anger. Even when he speaks to Faye about his past, his tone and demeanor is one of almost serene detachment. He seems to, if not accepted, then more or less dealt with his hardships: the war, his imprisonment, even the warping of his body. Everything, that is, except Vicious. It is clear Gren is extremely bright and perceptive. He offers up startling insight into Faye’s character, despite really only knowing her a few minutes, as well as escaped from a military prison, and yet he seems glaringly blind when it comes to Vicious. The torn photograph on his wall evidences that he has tried and failed to remove the man from his life. And yet, despite the fact that he so clearly hungers for answers, his anger completely prevents him from really hearing Vicious – who, though he acknowledges the existence of the solar transmitter, doesn’t seem to know what significance Gren is attaching to it.

The exact nature and reason for his relationship with Vicious is unstated, but it’s clear that his feelings border on obsession. Given his statement to Faye about not being interested in woman, it’s easy to guess that it was not entirely platonic, at least on Gren’s side. The question then becomes why would a seemingly good-natured person fall even a little in love with such a cold, forbidding person?

It is easy to see, if not from the way he acts, then from the photos on his wall, that Gren is a social person. He is drawn to Faye because he is lonely, having to isolate himself after his escape, due to both his status as a fugitive and the state of his body. It’s likely this is what led him to speak to Julia as well.

In his final speech to Vicious, he tells the man how he respected and looked up to him. Given that Gren is actually older than Vicious, this is a little unusual. Vicious, already a career killer in the Syndicate, must have been a stoic and determined soldier. But where most men might have been repelled by Vicious’ coldness, Gren was only compelled to befriend him.

Gren claims a particular attachment to the idea of comrades – perhaps as a deeper form of friendship, one formed and hardened in the forges of a common cause. He holds loyalty up as the highest ideal, and betrayal as an unforgivable act. It is an ideal that Vicious himself might have held before Spike left the Syndicate, causing him to abandon it altogether.

Even given his pleasant nature, there is a little bit of darkness that lurks in Gren’s heart. His drive to reconnect with Vicious was so strong that he willingly entered into the drug trade to get closer to him, an admittedly dirty business, with no apparent remorse or compunction, and while he doesn’t seem willing to share it under normal circumstances, he shamelessly takes advantage of his altered body to both intimidate Faye and to disguise himself. While it might be true that some of these behaviors are proof that Gren’s stay in prison has left him slightly unhinged, some of it might have already been there, under the surface. Vicious, in the very least, saw something in him that led him to continue to associate with Gren, and to go in person to a drug deal merely because the man himself had requested it.

In the end, however, Gren is fatally wounded in the dogfight that ensues in the skies over Callisto. He asks Spike to tow his crippled ship into space so that he might see Titan once more before he dies.

As final requests go this is an odd one. Why would he wish to see the setting of such a bloody war, a place that was in many ways the beginning of the end of his happy, normal life? Because, perhaps, it was the last place where he was happy – the place he had comrades.

RelationshipsEdit

CanonEdit

Vicious -

Julia -

Spike -

ParadisaEdit

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