Gil Ryanson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
breakaleginhalf) wrote2017-05-15 06:30 pm
breakaleginhalf) wrote2017-05-15 06:30 pm
[SYN] Application
P L A Y E R;
NAME: Maniette
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: n/a
TIMEZONE: AEST (GMT +10)
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
Maniette or PM here!
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Kinji Takigawaaka yoloninja the first
C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Gil Ryanson
CANON: Changeling: the Lost OC
POINT IN CANON: A year after his escape from the Faerie world
AGE: 23 as of entering the Hedge; time's a bit wibbly wobbly therein, so he actually has no idea what he is anymore.
APPEARANCE: PB is Sinqua Walls. For the most part, people won't see Gil as anything different; a short guy, five and a half foot (and who slouches super bad, only making his height worse), stocky but well-muscled, with a distinct tendency towards scarves and other neck coverings. Dresses like either a hipster or a hobo, depending on your perspective, but he's pretty fastidious about being clean, and keeping his hair shaved down short; he also never wears actual hats, or his hood up. Also, no shoes.
All of that, however, is an illusion; a Mask, of what he used to look like, covering what he is now. When a human gets trapped by the Fair Folk, it changes them: in Gil's case, he's all but a shambling mess of a monster, with very little consistency or coherency between his body parts. His body is human enough, albeit built like a bear and covered in a millimeters-short layer of thick, black fur; but that's about where the similarity ends. Bulky gorilla-like arms hang down to his knees, not long enough to knuckle along but good for getting an astounding quadrupedal turn of speed. A wiry lupine tail hangs between solid hind legs, but doesn't quite reach the oil-black cloven hooves at their base. His eyes really are human, shockingly, but his mouth and nose are a hyena's messy snout, scarred and with too-large fangs and a pronounced underbite, and his ears are bat-like and overlarge. He looks like he should have a thick mane, running from his head and shoulders all the way down his spine, but his fur is shaved hap-hazardously into submission.
tl;dr - think fairy tale monster from a nightmare. Other Changelings mistake him for a Beast (a different Seeming entirely) a lot. He'll usually correct it, but also doesn't care if they repeat their mistake. He gets where they're coming from.
Anyway, there's a reason Gil always wears scarves: covering most of his body are thick, ugly scars, circling limbs completely - and around his neck, there are three distinctive ones. A raised one, crossing the entire right side of his neck; a finer one, near the base of his skull, centered on his spine; and friction burns between his Adam's apple and jaw. These are by no means the only scars he has around his neck, but they're so prominent that they show through to his Mask. His wrists and forearms are also quite bad, particularly on his left side (he's left-handed), and there's a large criss-cross mess across his chest, with some particularly hypertrophic scars over his heart. All of these are visible through his fur, but are much more sparing on his Mask.
He speaks with a mild Australian accent, enough so that he's received comments in the past that it approaches American, Canadian and English all at once. However, it's the tell-tale slang that really sells that he's Australian. His voice is a bit husky due to the severe damage his throat's taken in the past, and he doesn't typically raise his voice much louder than speaking level due to the irritation this causes; sometimes he growls, and on rare occasion that gets about as loud as yelling, but when he does it often risks a coughing fit.
CANON HISTORY: Gil is an OC created using World of Darkness's Changeling: the Lost as a source. The game centers around Changelings, who are humans who were kidnapped by the True Fae and taken to Faerie to serve as whatever the Fae needed them to be. These Changelings have then escaped from the Fae and made it back to the human world, where they must now deal with what has happened to them and being something other than human. When the Fae took them, the Changelings lost a little bit of themselves, but gained something otherworldly--their own fae powers--in return.stealing your paragraph there Airdra soz
Gil's childhood wasn't overly strange in any way; an only child in a fairly well-off family in suburban Melbourne, Australia, with very little in the way of cousins or other relatives his own age. It wasn't particularly lonely, given that he was signed up to a veritable clusterfuck of afterschool activities in which he was a social butterfly and getting his shitlord on from a very early age; he was a bit spoiled, not disciplined too harshly, and tended to get away with quite a lot if he just whined hard enough. It wasn't until he finished primary school and entered secondary that he started getting called out on his shit - and not even by teachers; by his initial-worst-enemy-very-quickly-turned-bestie, Mai Khan. Gil teased the girl, and sure as hell did not expect for her to suddenly turn around and start teasing him back. This immediately got her on his shit list, and what that means, to a thirteen year old, is to immediately and relentlessly start tormenting her in every waking moment he could find. And Mai teased him right back, tit for tat, up until they were both fourteen and they got into a fist fight. And subsequently, detention. Both of them claimed vehemently that the other one started it, even as they were dragged into after-school detention; but that finally got Gil to respect Mai, and the two became thick as thieves, turning their collective talents onto other people instead.
It was late in high school that Gil's real talents came to the fore; apart from being an asshole, he discovered that he was decent at math, and actually greatly enjoyed it. He also discovered Shakespeare, through the magic of Baz Luhrmann, and within a week could quote the entire film word for word. That got him into the performing arts in general, wanting to be involved in those sorts of shenanigans for himself, and the end result was that he joined a drama club when he entered university. Mai didn't formally join, not being anywhere near as obsessed with it as Gil was (not enough to make it his major; not when Physics was an option, not when he could theoretically learn how to make spaceships even cooler and more astrodynamic) but just as excitable as him and entirely willing to enable his hobby. There were a good dozen or so people in the club Gil joined, but he was very quick to form a small clique, some of whom he discovered also went to his university as well, and throughout his student life they were all tight as hell.
So basically, up until this point, pretty typical. Right up until, during a late night when the seven of them were hanging out after practice and going over their latest script, 'Into the Woods' (most of which was spent bitching about their assigned roles, Gil having gotten the Big Bad Wolf), when they decided to give their parts one last run. None of them rightly remembered when their number turned to eight, nor when someone suggested they take a step outside to take a breath of fresh air - but when the group of them left the theatre, none of them would ever return to it. None of them ever learned how or when the Gentry had started taking an interest in their theatre group, or if the event had been planned, or if it had just been poor luck, in the end, that had gotten the group of friends snatched up and into the Faerie, and none of them would ever really find out.
What happened after that, Gil still remembers clearly. Their Keeper - subsequently and quite immediately renamed the Director by them all - didn't understand how plays worked. Especially not musicals. So every day, night after night (it could have been day, it could have been minutes apart each time - that part, how time even worked in Faerie, Gil didn't ever figure out) the group of them would have to put on productions for the entertainment of the Director and the other Gentry. And because they'd been in the theatre, the Director had a lot of scripts to work with. And every single time, for Every. Single. Performance. None of their roles ever changed.
Ever.
In every production, Nick and Eileen were always the Good Guys, the hero and herione, prince and princess, knight and damsel in distress; and as they performed like that, held to perfection by the audience, they both became Fairest, armoured in porcelain and lace. Tyler was stuck in Nick's shadow, his Best Friend or Mentor or Guardian, and his eyes turned to unblinking glass as Wizened powers took hold, forced to watch, to narrate his boyfriend falling in love over and over and over. Bailey became the Bad Guy, the evil King, the murderous Queen; a Beast, human enough at first glance, but spidery and venomous, death in his touch: and Mai as his servant; loyalties shredded to pieces, not even supposed to be here but trapped as the rest of them, a Darkling whose allegiance swung as hazardously as the burning spotlights she so came to fear. Wilhelmina became the Old Crone, always forced to be the evil witch who cursed the land, the fragile old man who turned the princess in the right direction, or to doom; the one who had to put the others back together, when the curtain closed, with all their Wizened abilities.
And Gil was the Monster. And, as the Director started reading the scripts they'd brought with them, and the book on fairy tales one of the others had been carrying, they noticed a recurring theme. The Monster always died.
The Big Bad Wolf, disemboweled and filled with stones to drown by the Woodsman's hand. The Giant, felled on his beanstalk by Jack and falling to his doom. Grendel, arm ripped off and left to die by Beowulf. The Jabberwock, decapitated. Dracula, stabbed through the heart. These and so many, many more became Gil's entire existence, and each one should have been his end - but what kind of toy would he be to the Director if he was to die for real? It sure as hell felt real enough, every single time hurt just as much as it ought to, but as soon as his head, or whatever other necessary limb was stitched back on and he had enough blood back inside him to function, the show went on. And on. And on.
But constantly needing to be healed meant spending an obscene amount of time alone with the now-smartest member of their group. Wil was the only one of them who had never forgotten who they were, and it was through them that Gil started to remember his own life. And despite his treatment, Gil wasn't stupid, not yet. So the two of them formed a plan, started to write their own script. It was the hardest thing either of them had ever tried doing, and more than once one of them would lose motivation, or hope, or just forget the plan existed. Which was where having a partner came in handy - to kick their ass back into gear, to finish their plan; and eventually, they managed to put a script together. One that the Director took, eventually, after so long that both of them had almost forgotten about it, and made them play.
Stories have power. Being in the middle of one gave Gil and his friends incredible strength. And the play he and Wil wrote played to that - it was a story with no fourth wall, one that meant they could all finally see what was happening around them, snap out of their enchantments and escape.
Except-- it didn't work. Not quite. Sure, it woke Gil and Wilhelmina up - but not anybody else. And the Director was furious. They turned to Wil, intent on ending them then and there, this toy wasn't fun anymore - and Gil attacked. With all the powers his Keeper has bestowed upon him, Gil was able to leap off the stage, over the crowd, to land a blow of vengeance and fury and deep irony: he tackled his Keeper to the ground, and ripped off their leg.
And with that acting as a very thorough distraction, the two friends escaped. Everything is a blur after that, as they escaped into the Hedge; all Gil knows for sure is that he lost Wil at some point in their escape, and he broke out of the Hedge in shrubland just off the Yarra River, close to the heart of Melbourne - he quickly learned that he'd only been gone for about a year or so, though he has no idea how long he was inside Faerie for. He was picked up very quickly by the Autumn Court, the Court of Fear - because who better to make one of your own than the cause of rumours along the river, enough to spark a news report, of a hideous monster running along and attacking people in the city's south? Not that Gil was, but rumour spreads fast, and he was adopted into them very quickly to prevent anything getting out of hand.
There wasn't much anyone could think for him to do for a while, given how young and unworldly he was, until he started picking up a reputation for tutoring other Changelings and very enthusiastically trying to educate them on matters of science and (surprisingly, after his Durance) theatrics, and with some fudging of papers Gil was quickly signed up to be an assistant teacher at a boarding school in the city's inner suburbs. The building was located in a Spring freehold, and so Gil wasn't the only Changeling on campus; but he was the only Autumn courtier, and his interactions with the other Changelings never really extended outside of work.
He was actually pretty good at it, too. Mostly he helped out in English and Science classes, or tutored students after school, but he was quick to start up a drama club within the school as well: theatre was his before it was the Fair Folk's, and he was going to take it back damnit. He very quickly got a reputation within the school as a cool teacher who was super good at derailing the class in order to tell horror stories; experiments gone wrong in science classes, or tales of bullying and haunted schools in English. He even managed to convince an entire year's worth of fourteen-year-olds that one specific room at their school was the site where a student hanged themselves, and got them all to avoid it for a solid month. There wasn't any reason behind it but that he could; also that the kids getting scared as they went past it was a good source of easy Glamour to skim off.
And that's where he's at when he gets picked up by the Arcana - on his way between classes, pulling his life back into a semblance of normality.
CANON PERSONALITY:
First and foremost, Gil is a massive shitlord. He revels in teasing people and getting reactions out of them - the louder the better, and the more flustered or frustrated someone got about it, the more he would sit back and grin gleefully. He's got a poker face that's pretty hard to beat, a skill gained from years of acting experience, but he's not gonna bother when he's actively trying for a rise like that. He doesn't tend to be actively malicious or cruel in his teasing; or at least, before his Durance, he wasn't inclined to do so. As he is now, he's far more open to somewhat merciless manipulation when he sees a need, bordering on cruel: he sees very little issue with using his fear-related powers to scare and torment people in order to get a desired result. As a general rule, though, he's not about to go and manipulate every person he sees; even if he's more okay than not with applying his powers to people, it's extremely rare that he'll use them as a first response.
On the flipside, though, he can't actually take being teased for shit, and has a tendency to go silent or even sulky when he is outclassed in shit-stirring. He's always had a childish streak a mile wide, and somehow this hasn't been killed by his Durance; while it's heavily tempered by the fact he's been through Hell and come out the other side in well under one piece (or, perhaps, exacerbated by all this), he's very easily amused by small things, has a petulant and sulky side that comes out in times of frustration, and can generally be very immature when he puts his mind to it.
As someone who considered himself to be a good scientist, he has a tendency to at least try and be very logically-minded when he goes and interacts with something new for the first time. He enjoys experimentation and will always be up for any kind of science; while his first love is applied physics and astrophysics, he's down for literally anything. He's got the scientific method memorised hardcore and stands by it just as firmly; this includes in regards to the testing of his own powers and Contracts, something he's been experimenting with ever since he escaped from Faerie, as well as his own trauma. He's realistic, if leaning heavily towards cynicism and black humour, about his Durance, his treatment by his Keeper and the manner in which he escaped, and the kinds of things he suffered through and did to others - though that doesn't mean he's willing to share them beyond trying to make a point. At the same time, he's got some pretty severe PTSD regarding his time spent in Faerie. He doesn't remember all of the scenarios he suffered through in detail, but he does remember, with intense clarity, a wide variety of deaths he's been through.
He knows full well what he is capable of, what his limits are, and is fully willing to make really tasteless in-jokes about them to people who don't get it. When he knows he can do something, he's fully willing to offer up his services; conversely, when he knows he can't, and someone insists that he can, he is quick to turn almost childishly stubborn. This is, in large part, actively encouraged by his fellow Autumn Courtiers - unlike the other Courts, the Ashen Court encourages its members to embrace these fears, never seeking to cure them, and Gil is no exception. They are the court of fear, and what good would it do for its Courtiers to not be intimately familiar with the concept themselves?
Gil has a solid presence, excellent stage presence, and an admirable amount of patience. He's sat through his own deaths a thousand times over, and is no stranger to pain and having to sit still while he's being actively sewn back together with no anaesthetic. He's exemplary at handling drama club rooms full of rowdy teens, and at keeping them engaged, and has a knack for helping people get over stage fright: after his Durance this has broadened immensely, to the point where he's now reasonably competent at helping people who are suffering through PTSD or panic attacks. At the same time, he refuses help for his own panic attacks or triggered moments, and will typically hide away and dissociate to the extreme - he'll come out again when he's done, hardly any worse for wear.
He's normally pretty okay at keeping his head under pressure - dealing with a room full of rowdy teenagers gets you pretty good at that - and he tries really hard to keep his violence to a minimum. He's pretty good at keeping up the charade that he's actually civil; and in general, he's usually not terrible at being methodical, calculating and logical.
He has found music helps a lot at keeping his magical tendencies in check, especially theatre songs - the Fair Folk can't make music, they don't get it, so listening to music has become a coping mechanism to keep him grounded as much as it is he just likes music.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: Infiltrating, hoo boy. Gil's entire Durance was being forced to play a Role, invariably that of the Bad Guy in fairy tales that got killed by the heroes. First few times he is going to flip his absolute shit upon returning to himself, probably to the point of a violent panic attack and extended periods of dissociation, because what no he was meant to have escaped all of this, he literally spent actual years being subject to this and he is very much not okay with being put through it AGAIN.
He will probably never chill out about this, but at least the panic attacks won't last more than one or two Infiltrations. If he gets some Infiltrations that aren't based around the fact he's literally a monster designed to be killed by The Good Guys, he might get some chill eventually, but that's more likely to be seen as a once-off event than any kind of new norm. He'll actually be pretty chill about being non-human in any capacity, but he'll be very upset about fully human forms, because fuck you guys he can't ever be human again and he's not going to get over that.
On the upside, though, he will be very blase about his own in-Jaunt deaths because hey, whatever man, he's already done this before too and there's always been someone to stitch him back up. The being healed instantly part will even be a nice touch (what's a few days being dead, time isn't linear anyway).
VETERAN?: nah
ABILITIES: First and foremost to any Changeling is their fae mien and Mask. Regardless of whatever else they do or don't have, Changelings will always have a Mask. It's essentially a veil that hides their magically mangled features; it even goes as far as hiding the excess muscles and limbs Gil's ended up with, and is thorough enough that, under most situations, humans can't see through it, even when he's caught on camera. It's not flawless, however; other Changeling can see through it completely, and mortals under certain conditions can as well (children, drunkards at the full moon, seventh son of a seventh son, people with two different colored eyes, people who have slept in a cemetery on a grave, anything otherwise appropriately fairy-tale-esque, etc); alternately, if he wants someone to see through it, he can perform the Oath of Blood and Roses and make someone see through all Masks for a month, on the condition that they can't tell anyone, and that they owe Gil a favour for doing so. If people touch him, they'll only feel what they expect to see - instead of fur, they'll feel his bare skin. When they touch clothing, it's real clothing - which means, yes, he's wearing those jackets and jeans over his inhuman body shape. They don't fit properly, but people don't notice. Unfortunately, the Mask doesn't quite cover his shadow - if people catch it out of the corner of their eye (or in appropriately dramatic circumstances bc it's fun), they'll see it in the shape of his true form. A double take, though, settles it right back to human shape.
Changelings, also, all have a Seeming and a Kith: Gil's Seeming is an Ogre, a hulking, brutish beast; his fighting capabilities are thus excellent. His Kith is Gristlegrinder, which is the most along the lines of fairy tale trolls and monsters, and thanks to this Kith he has distinctly more threatening teeth than any other Ogre, that he can use as a lethal attack if he manages to grapple someone.
All of Gil's Changeling abilities that require activation will burn Glamour; basically, Glamour is human emotion as a harvestable energy source. Back at the school he worked at, this was surprisingly easy; teens are a veritable clusterfuck of emotions, and between already being a good actor and clever use of his Contracts, he was always able to make back any Glamour he used up by inspiring and subsequently skimming it off of his students. It still feels a bit manipulative, making people feel Feelings just so he can steal them, so he doesn't like doing it more often than strictly necessary. If he burns all of his Glamour at once, he can shatter his Mask and reveal what he actually looks like to people, but this is a Bad Idea: obviously, it means he has no Glamour left to strengthen his Mask once more or use in general.
He has the following Contracts, all of which require burning of Glamour to use:
He also has the following Merits, permanent passive enchantments:
Due to being a literal fairy tale monster, he also has generally superior senses to regular humans; his hearing and sense of smell, in particular, are at least as good as some of the animals he's Frankenstein'd together from. Because he works at a high school, he is uncomfortably familiar with the various smells that pubescent humans emit, as well as typical adults, so he can usually pick up quite quickly if someone doesn't smell typically human around him.
His eyesight is pretty regular - he's not quite, but almost in need of glasses. He's also got a greatly dimished sense of his own mortality, due to how many times he's died that it now feels surreal to even consider that he can actually die at all.
And putting the supernatural stuff aside for a moment...
Gil, before all of this shit, was studying for his Masters of Applied Physics, and was very nearly finished when he got snatched up. So he is all about that science-y shit, particularly in regards to maths, spaceships and applying maths to spaceships to make them cooler. He's also currently learning how to teach a class on his own.
He's super nutso into theatre still, despite his Durance, and while he has a permanent lowkey boner for the works of Shakespeare his true love is for cult horror musicals. And while those make up the bulk of his cultural databanks, he is also from the modern 21st century, and has the appropriate cultural knowledge of that period.
In other words, he speaks fluent meme and knows pop culture.
He's also not a terrible singer, either, even if he's a bit huskier now than he used to be.
INVENTORY: A laptop backpack with his laptop, phone and MP3 player and their respective chargers, earbuds, keys, wallet, a notebook half-filled with class plans and notes, a dog-eared and heavily annotated copy of a 'Sweeney Todd' script, an almost unappetizingly meaty six inch sub in plastic wrap, and a bottle of water.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? he is hella gay, look out manly men
M A R K S;
JUSTIFICATION:
VETO:
Fool: On the ground that Kinji already has him.
http://comebewe.dreamwidth.org/5499.html
S A M P L E S;
ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE:
[This was not his beautiful house. This was not his beautiful wife.
Hell, by the smell of this place it wasn't even his own world. Everything was just slightly... wrong]
Okay, this is, like-- cool? And all? Love the aesthetic, really.
[He turns on the spot, taking in the room, trying to find an exit.]
Buuuut I have a class in like, five minutes? Yeah, gonna need you to put me back.
[Whoever 'you' was.
This place didn't smell Faerie, but it was honestly the first thing on his mind because really, who else could just snatch people up without their noticing?]
PROSE SAMPLE: Old test drive!
NAME: Maniette
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: n/a
TIMEZONE: AEST (GMT +10)
CONTACT:
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Kinji Takigawa
C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Gil Ryanson
CANON: Changeling: the Lost OC
POINT IN CANON: A year after his escape from the Faerie world
AGE: 23 as of entering the Hedge; time's a bit wibbly wobbly therein, so he actually has no idea what he is anymore.
APPEARANCE: PB is Sinqua Walls. For the most part, people won't see Gil as anything different; a short guy, five and a half foot (and who slouches super bad, only making his height worse), stocky but well-muscled, with a distinct tendency towards scarves and other neck coverings. Dresses like either a hipster or a hobo, depending on your perspective, but he's pretty fastidious about being clean, and keeping his hair shaved down short; he also never wears actual hats, or his hood up. Also, no shoes.
All of that, however, is an illusion; a Mask, of what he used to look like, covering what he is now. When a human gets trapped by the Fair Folk, it changes them: in Gil's case, he's all but a shambling mess of a monster, with very little consistency or coherency between his body parts. His body is human enough, albeit built like a bear and covered in a millimeters-short layer of thick, black fur; but that's about where the similarity ends. Bulky gorilla-like arms hang down to his knees, not long enough to knuckle along but good for getting an astounding quadrupedal turn of speed. A wiry lupine tail hangs between solid hind legs, but doesn't quite reach the oil-black cloven hooves at their base. His eyes really are human, shockingly, but his mouth and nose are a hyena's messy snout, scarred and with too-large fangs and a pronounced underbite, and his ears are bat-like and overlarge. He looks like he should have a thick mane, running from his head and shoulders all the way down his spine, but his fur is shaved hap-hazardously into submission.
tl;dr - think fairy tale monster from a nightmare. Other Changelings mistake him for a Beast (a different Seeming entirely) a lot. He'll usually correct it, but also doesn't care if they repeat their mistake. He gets where they're coming from.
Anyway, there's a reason Gil always wears scarves: covering most of his body are thick, ugly scars, circling limbs completely - and around his neck, there are three distinctive ones. A raised one, crossing the entire right side of his neck; a finer one, near the base of his skull, centered on his spine; and friction burns between his Adam's apple and jaw. These are by no means the only scars he has around his neck, but they're so prominent that they show through to his Mask. His wrists and forearms are also quite bad, particularly on his left side (he's left-handed), and there's a large criss-cross mess across his chest, with some particularly hypertrophic scars over his heart. All of these are visible through his fur, but are much more sparing on his Mask.
He speaks with a mild Australian accent, enough so that he's received comments in the past that it approaches American, Canadian and English all at once. However, it's the tell-tale slang that really sells that he's Australian. His voice is a bit husky due to the severe damage his throat's taken in the past, and he doesn't typically raise his voice much louder than speaking level due to the irritation this causes; sometimes he growls, and on rare occasion that gets about as loud as yelling, but when he does it often risks a coughing fit.
CANON HISTORY: Gil is an OC created using World of Darkness's Changeling: the Lost as a source. The game centers around Changelings, who are humans who were kidnapped by the True Fae and taken to Faerie to serve as whatever the Fae needed them to be. These Changelings have then escaped from the Fae and made it back to the human world, where they must now deal with what has happened to them and being something other than human. When the Fae took them, the Changelings lost a little bit of themselves, but gained something otherworldly--their own fae powers--in return.
Gil's childhood wasn't overly strange in any way; an only child in a fairly well-off family in suburban Melbourne, Australia, with very little in the way of cousins or other relatives his own age. It wasn't particularly lonely, given that he was signed up to a veritable clusterfuck of afterschool activities in which he was a social butterfly and getting his shitlord on from a very early age; he was a bit spoiled, not disciplined too harshly, and tended to get away with quite a lot if he just whined hard enough. It wasn't until he finished primary school and entered secondary that he started getting called out on his shit - and not even by teachers; by his initial-worst-enemy-very-quickly-turned-bestie, Mai Khan. Gil teased the girl, and sure as hell did not expect for her to suddenly turn around and start teasing him back. This immediately got her on his shit list, and what that means, to a thirteen year old, is to immediately and relentlessly start tormenting her in every waking moment he could find. And Mai teased him right back, tit for tat, up until they were both fourteen and they got into a fist fight. And subsequently, detention. Both of them claimed vehemently that the other one started it, even as they were dragged into after-school detention; but that finally got Gil to respect Mai, and the two became thick as thieves, turning their collective talents onto other people instead.
It was late in high school that Gil's real talents came to the fore; apart from being an asshole, he discovered that he was decent at math, and actually greatly enjoyed it. He also discovered Shakespeare, through the magic of Baz Luhrmann, and within a week could quote the entire film word for word. That got him into the performing arts in general, wanting to be involved in those sorts of shenanigans for himself, and the end result was that he joined a drama club when he entered university. Mai didn't formally join, not being anywhere near as obsessed with it as Gil was (not enough to make it his major; not when Physics was an option, not when he could theoretically learn how to make spaceships even cooler and more astrodynamic) but just as excitable as him and entirely willing to enable his hobby. There were a good dozen or so people in the club Gil joined, but he was very quick to form a small clique, some of whom he discovered also went to his university as well, and throughout his student life they were all tight as hell.
So basically, up until this point, pretty typical. Right up until, during a late night when the seven of them were hanging out after practice and going over their latest script, 'Into the Woods' (most of which was spent bitching about their assigned roles, Gil having gotten the Big Bad Wolf), when they decided to give their parts one last run. None of them rightly remembered when their number turned to eight, nor when someone suggested they take a step outside to take a breath of fresh air - but when the group of them left the theatre, none of them would ever return to it. None of them ever learned how or when the Gentry had started taking an interest in their theatre group, or if the event had been planned, or if it had just been poor luck, in the end, that had gotten the group of friends snatched up and into the Faerie, and none of them would ever really find out.
What happened after that, Gil still remembers clearly. Their Keeper - subsequently and quite immediately renamed the Director by them all - didn't understand how plays worked. Especially not musicals. So every day, night after night (it could have been day, it could have been minutes apart each time - that part, how time even worked in Faerie, Gil didn't ever figure out) the group of them would have to put on productions for the entertainment of the Director and the other Gentry. And because they'd been in the theatre, the Director had a lot of scripts to work with. And every single time, for Every. Single. Performance. None of their roles ever changed.
Ever.
In every production, Nick and Eileen were always the Good Guys, the hero and herione, prince and princess, knight and damsel in distress; and as they performed like that, held to perfection by the audience, they both became Fairest, armoured in porcelain and lace. Tyler was stuck in Nick's shadow, his Best Friend or Mentor or Guardian, and his eyes turned to unblinking glass as Wizened powers took hold, forced to watch, to narrate his boyfriend falling in love over and over and over. Bailey became the Bad Guy, the evil King, the murderous Queen; a Beast, human enough at first glance, but spidery and venomous, death in his touch: and Mai as his servant; loyalties shredded to pieces, not even supposed to be here but trapped as the rest of them, a Darkling whose allegiance swung as hazardously as the burning spotlights she so came to fear. Wilhelmina became the Old Crone, always forced to be the evil witch who cursed the land, the fragile old man who turned the princess in the right direction, or to doom; the one who had to put the others back together, when the curtain closed, with all their Wizened abilities.
And Gil was the Monster. And, as the Director started reading the scripts they'd brought with them, and the book on fairy tales one of the others had been carrying, they noticed a recurring theme. The Monster always died.
The Big Bad Wolf, disemboweled and filled with stones to drown by the Woodsman's hand. The Giant, felled on his beanstalk by Jack and falling to his doom. Grendel, arm ripped off and left to die by Beowulf. The Jabberwock, decapitated. Dracula, stabbed through the heart. These and so many, many more became Gil's entire existence, and each one should have been his end - but what kind of toy would he be to the Director if he was to die for real? It sure as hell felt real enough, every single time hurt just as much as it ought to, but as soon as his head, or whatever other necessary limb was stitched back on and he had enough blood back inside him to function, the show went on. And on. And on.
But constantly needing to be healed meant spending an obscene amount of time alone with the now-smartest member of their group. Wil was the only one of them who had never forgotten who they were, and it was through them that Gil started to remember his own life. And despite his treatment, Gil wasn't stupid, not yet. So the two of them formed a plan, started to write their own script. It was the hardest thing either of them had ever tried doing, and more than once one of them would lose motivation, or hope, or just forget the plan existed. Which was where having a partner came in handy - to kick their ass back into gear, to finish their plan; and eventually, they managed to put a script together. One that the Director took, eventually, after so long that both of them had almost forgotten about it, and made them play.
Stories have power. Being in the middle of one gave Gil and his friends incredible strength. And the play he and Wil wrote played to that - it was a story with no fourth wall, one that meant they could all finally see what was happening around them, snap out of their enchantments and escape.
Except-- it didn't work. Not quite. Sure, it woke Gil and Wilhelmina up - but not anybody else. And the Director was furious. They turned to Wil, intent on ending them then and there, this toy wasn't fun anymore - and Gil attacked. With all the powers his Keeper has bestowed upon him, Gil was able to leap off the stage, over the crowd, to land a blow of vengeance and fury and deep irony: he tackled his Keeper to the ground, and ripped off their leg.
And with that acting as a very thorough distraction, the two friends escaped. Everything is a blur after that, as they escaped into the Hedge; all Gil knows for sure is that he lost Wil at some point in their escape, and he broke out of the Hedge in shrubland just off the Yarra River, close to the heart of Melbourne - he quickly learned that he'd only been gone for about a year or so, though he has no idea how long he was inside Faerie for. He was picked up very quickly by the Autumn Court, the Court of Fear - because who better to make one of your own than the cause of rumours along the river, enough to spark a news report, of a hideous monster running along and attacking people in the city's south? Not that Gil was, but rumour spreads fast, and he was adopted into them very quickly to prevent anything getting out of hand.
There wasn't much anyone could think for him to do for a while, given how young and unworldly he was, until he started picking up a reputation for tutoring other Changelings and very enthusiastically trying to educate them on matters of science and (surprisingly, after his Durance) theatrics, and with some fudging of papers Gil was quickly signed up to be an assistant teacher at a boarding school in the city's inner suburbs. The building was located in a Spring freehold, and so Gil wasn't the only Changeling on campus; but he was the only Autumn courtier, and his interactions with the other Changelings never really extended outside of work.
He was actually pretty good at it, too. Mostly he helped out in English and Science classes, or tutored students after school, but he was quick to start up a drama club within the school as well: theatre was his before it was the Fair Folk's, and he was going to take it back damnit. He very quickly got a reputation within the school as a cool teacher who was super good at derailing the class in order to tell horror stories; experiments gone wrong in science classes, or tales of bullying and haunted schools in English. He even managed to convince an entire year's worth of fourteen-year-olds that one specific room at their school was the site where a student hanged themselves, and got them all to avoid it for a solid month. There wasn't any reason behind it but that he could; also that the kids getting scared as they went past it was a good source of easy Glamour to skim off.
And that's where he's at when he gets picked up by the Arcana - on his way between classes, pulling his life back into a semblance of normality.
CANON PERSONALITY:
First and foremost, Gil is a massive shitlord. He revels in teasing people and getting reactions out of them - the louder the better, and the more flustered or frustrated someone got about it, the more he would sit back and grin gleefully. He's got a poker face that's pretty hard to beat, a skill gained from years of acting experience, but he's not gonna bother when he's actively trying for a rise like that. He doesn't tend to be actively malicious or cruel in his teasing; or at least, before his Durance, he wasn't inclined to do so. As he is now, he's far more open to somewhat merciless manipulation when he sees a need, bordering on cruel: he sees very little issue with using his fear-related powers to scare and torment people in order to get a desired result. As a general rule, though, he's not about to go and manipulate every person he sees; even if he's more okay than not with applying his powers to people, it's extremely rare that he'll use them as a first response.
On the flipside, though, he can't actually take being teased for shit, and has a tendency to go silent or even sulky when he is outclassed in shit-stirring. He's always had a childish streak a mile wide, and somehow this hasn't been killed by his Durance; while it's heavily tempered by the fact he's been through Hell and come out the other side in well under one piece (or, perhaps, exacerbated by all this), he's very easily amused by small things, has a petulant and sulky side that comes out in times of frustration, and can generally be very immature when he puts his mind to it.
As someone who considered himself to be a good scientist, he has a tendency to at least try and be very logically-minded when he goes and interacts with something new for the first time. He enjoys experimentation and will always be up for any kind of science; while his first love is applied physics and astrophysics, he's down for literally anything. He's got the scientific method memorised hardcore and stands by it just as firmly; this includes in regards to the testing of his own powers and Contracts, something he's been experimenting with ever since he escaped from Faerie, as well as his own trauma. He's realistic, if leaning heavily towards cynicism and black humour, about his Durance, his treatment by his Keeper and the manner in which he escaped, and the kinds of things he suffered through and did to others - though that doesn't mean he's willing to share them beyond trying to make a point. At the same time, he's got some pretty severe PTSD regarding his time spent in Faerie. He doesn't remember all of the scenarios he suffered through in detail, but he does remember, with intense clarity, a wide variety of deaths he's been through.
He knows full well what he is capable of, what his limits are, and is fully willing to make really tasteless in-jokes about them to people who don't get it. When he knows he can do something, he's fully willing to offer up his services; conversely, when he knows he can't, and someone insists that he can, he is quick to turn almost childishly stubborn. This is, in large part, actively encouraged by his fellow Autumn Courtiers - unlike the other Courts, the Ashen Court encourages its members to embrace these fears, never seeking to cure them, and Gil is no exception. They are the court of fear, and what good would it do for its Courtiers to not be intimately familiar with the concept themselves?
Gil has a solid presence, excellent stage presence, and an admirable amount of patience. He's sat through his own deaths a thousand times over, and is no stranger to pain and having to sit still while he's being actively sewn back together with no anaesthetic. He's exemplary at handling drama club rooms full of rowdy teens, and at keeping them engaged, and has a knack for helping people get over stage fright: after his Durance this has broadened immensely, to the point where he's now reasonably competent at helping people who are suffering through PTSD or panic attacks. At the same time, he refuses help for his own panic attacks or triggered moments, and will typically hide away and dissociate to the extreme - he'll come out again when he's done, hardly any worse for wear.
He's normally pretty okay at keeping his head under pressure - dealing with a room full of rowdy teenagers gets you pretty good at that - and he tries really hard to keep his violence to a minimum. He's pretty good at keeping up the charade that he's actually civil; and in general, he's usually not terrible at being methodical, calculating and logical.
He has found music helps a lot at keeping his magical tendencies in check, especially theatre songs - the Fair Folk can't make music, they don't get it, so listening to music has become a coping mechanism to keep him grounded as much as it is he just likes music.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: Infiltrating, hoo boy. Gil's entire Durance was being forced to play a Role, invariably that of the Bad Guy in fairy tales that got killed by the heroes. First few times he is going to flip his absolute shit upon returning to himself, probably to the point of a violent panic attack and extended periods of dissociation, because what no he was meant to have escaped all of this, he literally spent actual years being subject to this and he is very much not okay with being put through it AGAIN.
He will probably never chill out about this, but at least the panic attacks won't last more than one or two Infiltrations. If he gets some Infiltrations that aren't based around the fact he's literally a monster designed to be killed by The Good Guys, he might get some chill eventually, but that's more likely to be seen as a once-off event than any kind of new norm. He'll actually be pretty chill about being non-human in any capacity, but he'll be very upset about fully human forms, because fuck you guys he can't ever be human again and he's not going to get over that.
On the upside, though, he will be very blase about his own in-Jaunt deaths because hey, whatever man, he's already done this before too and there's always been someone to stitch him back up. The being healed instantly part will even be a nice touch (what's a few days being dead, time isn't linear anyway).
VETERAN?: nah
ABILITIES: First and foremost to any Changeling is their fae mien and Mask. Regardless of whatever else they do or don't have, Changelings will always have a Mask. It's essentially a veil that hides their magically mangled features; it even goes as far as hiding the excess muscles and limbs Gil's ended up with, and is thorough enough that, under most situations, humans can't see through it, even when he's caught on camera. It's not flawless, however; other Changeling can see through it completely, and mortals under certain conditions can as well (children, drunkards at the full moon, seventh son of a seventh son, people with two different colored eyes, people who have slept in a cemetery on a grave, anything otherwise appropriately fairy-tale-esque, etc); alternately, if he wants someone to see through it, he can perform the Oath of Blood and Roses and make someone see through all Masks for a month, on the condition that they can't tell anyone, and that they owe Gil a favour for doing so. If people touch him, they'll only feel what they expect to see - instead of fur, they'll feel his bare skin. When they touch clothing, it's real clothing - which means, yes, he's wearing those jackets and jeans over his inhuman body shape. They don't fit properly, but people don't notice. Unfortunately, the Mask doesn't quite cover his shadow - if people catch it out of the corner of their eye (or in appropriately dramatic circumstances bc it's fun), they'll see it in the shape of his true form. A double take, though, settles it right back to human shape.
Changelings, also, all have a Seeming and a Kith: Gil's Seeming is an Ogre, a hulking, brutish beast; his fighting capabilities are thus excellent. His Kith is Gristlegrinder, which is the most along the lines of fairy tale trolls and monsters, and thanks to this Kith he has distinctly more threatening teeth than any other Ogre, that he can use as a lethal attack if he manages to grapple someone.
All of Gil's Changeling abilities that require activation will burn Glamour; basically, Glamour is human emotion as a harvestable energy source. Back at the school he worked at, this was surprisingly easy; teens are a veritable clusterfuck of emotions, and between already being a good actor and clever use of his Contracts, he was always able to make back any Glamour he used up by inspiring and subsequently skimming it off of his students. It still feels a bit manipulative, making people feel Feelings just so he can steal them, so he doesn't like doing it more often than strictly necessary. If he burns all of his Glamour at once, he can shatter his Mask and reveal what he actually looks like to people, but this is a Bad Idea: obviously, it means he has no Glamour left to strengthen his Mask once more or use in general.
He has the following Contracts, all of which require burning of Glamour to use:
- Might of the Terrible Brute: The aforementioned 'become even more intimidating and powerful', a signature Contract for Ogres.
- Ogre's Rending Grasp: Can be really, really good at breaking through inanimate obstacles in his path.
- Witches' Intuition: He can learn one of their deepest fears. As long as they doesn't know Gil's name, he doesn't even burn Glamour doing it.
- Tale of the Baba Yaga: Supernaturally good at ghost stories.
He also has the following Merits, permanent passive enchantments:
- Direction Sense: A living compass.
- Fleet of Foot: For someone as bulky as Gil is, he can move.
- Iron Stomach: Rotten meat? Okay. Plastic bags? Sure. Radioactive material? ...well, technically yes.
- Strong Back: Can carry frankly ridiculous amounts of weight.
- Mantle (Autumn): Proof that he's a member of the Autumn Court. When he walks, the faint sound of leaves crunching underfoot can be heard.
Due to being a literal fairy tale monster, he also has generally superior senses to regular humans; his hearing and sense of smell, in particular, are at least as good as some of the animals he's Frankenstein'd together from. Because he works at a high school, he is uncomfortably familiar with the various smells that pubescent humans emit, as well as typical adults, so he can usually pick up quite quickly if someone doesn't smell typically human around him.
His eyesight is pretty regular - he's not quite, but almost in need of glasses. He's also got a greatly dimished sense of his own mortality, due to how many times he's died that it now feels surreal to even consider that he can actually die at all.
And putting the supernatural stuff aside for a moment...
Gil, before all of this shit, was studying for his Masters of Applied Physics, and was very nearly finished when he got snatched up. So he is all about that science-y shit, particularly in regards to maths, spaceships and applying maths to spaceships to make them cooler. He's also currently learning how to teach a class on his own.
He's super nutso into theatre still, despite his Durance, and while he has a permanent lowkey boner for the works of Shakespeare his true love is for cult horror musicals. And while those make up the bulk of his cultural databanks, he is also from the modern 21st century, and has the appropriate cultural knowledge of that period.
In other words, he speaks fluent meme and knows pop culture.
He's also not a terrible singer, either, even if he's a bit huskier now than he used to be.
INVENTORY: A laptop backpack with his laptop, phone and MP3 player and their respective chargers, earbuds, keys, wallet, a notebook half-filled with class plans and notes, a dog-eared and heavily annotated copy of a 'Sweeney Todd' script, an almost unappetizingly meaty six inch sub in plastic wrap, and a bottle of water.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? he is hella gay, look out manly men
M A R K S;
JUSTIFICATION:
- Magician: A great amount of Gil's personality, to him, is defined by the performing arts and acting in general. All of Magician's archetypes very much fit him in that specific regard; 'determination' and 'personal power' in particular are strong ones, as both of these are what allowed him to escape his captivity with the Fair Folk; 'consciousness' is also a strong one, as Gil is very aware of himself and his own presence, and is extremely creative in regards to the kinds of stories he can weave. He's also an extremely energetic and playful person, quick to tease and play with people around him.
- Strength: To be able to escape the Gentry, one must be solid, patient, and enduring. Changelings are noted as being extraordinary people without exception, all showing some sort of inner strength for being able to escape such an impossible, torturous existence. And despite the strength with which he holds himself up, Gil is still struggling, trying so hard to keep himself from falling to pieces. He tries to give himself therapy, come to terms with what has happened to him. He is compassionate towards those who have suffered in the ways he has, and is quick to offer a shoulder to others in pain. He is entirely aware of himself, what he's been through and what he's capable of, and tries hard to keep himself from falling to despair because of it.
- Death: In a more literal sense, Gil is intimately familiar with death as a concept. The vast majority of the stories he suffered through were extremely unkind to him, and while he was able to be fixed after them all, he has died more times than he can even track. As a Changeling, as well, he has suffered through the death of his old life, what he was and what he knew, with no chance of ever returning to it, and transitioned to being his current state - a new body, new mind, new powers, a new inescapable world view that will never be less than a heavy weight on his heart.
VETO:
Fool: On the ground that Kinji already has him.
http://comebewe.dreamwidth.org/5499.html
S A M P L E S;
ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE:
[This was not his beautiful house. This was not his beautiful wife.
Hell, by the smell of this place it wasn't even his own world. Everything was just slightly... wrong]
Okay, this is, like-- cool? And all? Love the aesthetic, really.
[He turns on the spot, taking in the room, trying to find an exit.]
Buuuut I have a class in like, five minutes? Yeah, gonna need you to put me back.
[Whoever 'you' was.
This place didn't smell Faerie, but it was honestly the first thing on his mind because really, who else could just snatch people up without their noticing?]
PROSE SAMPLE: Old test drive!