Played By: Silvy.
Name: Apollo James Shirley.
Age: 58.
Homeworld: Paradise.
Significant Affiliations/Connections to the Current Crew: CJ, Seth.
Appearance: Shorter than Tisha by a few inches, broad of shoulder and a little thick around the waist these days. He has a salt and pepper goatee and some grey in his hair as well, and a smile that lights up the room as quickly as his voice can silence one.
His side of the family's mutations are more minor - and so he isn't as good a swimmer as his wife or son.
He has a few small tattoos, one of CJ's birthday and a couple others in the local style.
Personality: Most of the time he's good natured. He loves his family, loves his job, and has worked hard to keep both. He's very much in love with Tisha, and would move heaven and earth for her. They used to have regular 'date nights' where they dance until morning at the local club.
His temper, though, is nothing to be fucked with. His voice when raised is a terrifying thing to hear.
He has an archaic view of masculinity and thinks CJ just needs to find a good woman to bring home and settle down with.
History: Apollo James Shirley was born into a family with a bit more money than most of the native Paradisians he went to school with. They used to have a lot more, back when his great, great grandparents first came to the planet, but somewhere along the line - how and who, he was never told - the family fortune was squandered, someone left someone, and those who remained scrambled to hold it together. Over the years, they adopted a number of Paradisian customs, and even some of the religious beliefs... but there was plenty they couldn't shake, too.
AJ has never grown out of the classist mindset his parents instilled in him, not even when he fell in love with Titania Jenkins. Local through and through, her family went all the way back to the first ships on Paradise, and they met in their early twenties when he'd just started at the Harbor Patrol. A young cadet at the time, when he ran across a pretty young woman whose friends had left her behind to take the rap for stealing a boat, who could blame him for falling head over heels? He lied to his superiors that night - for the first time ever - and said he never found the culprits.
They ran into each other a few times after that, around town, and eventually started to make the run-ins intentional. AJ didn't bother hiding the fact that he didn't approve of her friends, though, and bit by bit as they dated over the years he managed to convince her away from them. After all, they were criminals, they had left her to get caught, so what good were they?
It didn't take long for him to propose, or Tisha to accept, but it was a few more years before they finally managed to have a child - a son. In some ways, he blames that for the beginning of the end, though it would be almost another thirty years before things truly went downhill. In the meantime, AJ did what he thought was his best to keep the family together.
Which included trying to warn Castor off the Frost boy, when he knew from day one he'd be trouble with a mother like that. As far as he's concerned, every moment after only proved him right - from the detentions and suspensions to later law-breaking and violence at school... And it couldn't have been any coincidence that the makeup and skirts and boyfriends started after Castor met Seth.
He tried to keep CJ in check, and Tisha tried to keep AJ in check, and for a while, it almost even worked. There was the occasional... outburst, but mostly, they managed just fine - and then Castor announced that he and Seth were joining the military.
Absolutely not.
He remembered those words clear as crystal, but they made no difference, as usual. Nothing did, to convince Castor that he was making a mistake, a shitton of them in fact.
But he couldn't deny that Castor leaving home had a positive influence on his marriage. He and Tisha fought less frequently after that, and even settled into something resembling the relationship they had before their son was born. He thought they were happy, for a while.
Over the last few years, though, that tension grew again. It started with the Frost boy going to jail. Good, he'd thought, until the dominoes kept falling. The phone call to Castor about it ended in a fight, and Tisha blamed him. Him? It was their son who refused to pick up the phone after, not for years.
And Gods, when Castor finally did pick up - AJ couldn't remember ever being that angry before. After, it felt like they couldn't stop fighting, either, him and Tisha. Every little thing turned into an argument, and the last straw was, conveniently, Castor again.
Following the last fight, Tisha moved out to stay with Annabelle, and since then AJ has grown progressively less pleasant to be around. Even at work, his mood has been unsavory, and he's been drinking more.
Model: Keith David.