the ooc
Name: Rian.
Age: 21.
Email: moc.liamg|4091yawarac#moc.liamg|4091yawarac
AIM: caraway1914.
past experience: All my experience can be found between my journal and my wiki.
hold: hello_from_dis.
character journal: gargouille
the ic
Name: Jean-Luc Robert Haupert-Collins. Goes almost exclusively by John Collins in the states, though his full name is on all his papers.
Age/Birthdate: 20/ August 17. Yeah, he's a year older than everyone else, and in a few months, will be able to buy everyone alcohol. CHECK OUT THE LIFE OF THE PARTY.
Sexuality: Heterosexual. HOW ELSE IS HE SUPPOSED TO PINE AFTER LADIES.
Alias/Codename: Chimera. He very briefly went by The Gargoyle when he first arrived in Neopolis, as something of a self-deprecating joke — but once he realized just how serious people really were about their codenames, he changed it. He would really just prefer to go by John Collins, thanks.
Concept: Born into the lap of luxury, John Collins (born Jean-Luc Haupert-Collins) had everything going for him: fame, fortune, a position in his father's company — that is, until his father's death sent him into a downward spiral of self-destruction, which ultimately landed him in the unmerciful hands of two arson-happy London muggers. With nearly 20% of his body covered in burns and his life in shambles, John's family sought out the aid of unscrupulous ELE alchemical surgeon, Dr. Magnus, who opted to combine the young man's DNA with a sample of gargoyle blood. The experiment failed spectacularly, leaving John still burned, and now half a gargoyle. Living under the halls of Neopolis Academy like a school-aged Phantom of the Opera, John stays as hidden from his peers as he can, trying to learn how to control a disability that is looking increasingly uncontrollable.
Faculty: Gothic.
Year: First. Which is more than a little weird considering his age, but it's not like he has a choice.
Skills: HE'S A FUCKING GARGOYLE.
<blockquote>
Superhuman strength. Even when not in gargoyle form, John is preternaturally strong. Not, perhaps, as strong as some of the capes whose express ability is superhuman strength, but he is more than capable of lifting things at least three times his own weight. Not so much in size, as unwieldly things are still unwieldly things; but at the moment, he can lift without much difficulty nearly 1000 pounds in gargoyle form, and about 500 pounds in human form. This also means, should he ever deign to get into a fight, that he packs a pretty mean punch.
Invulnerability. Far from complete invulnerability, but because he is constantly partially made of stone, John is less susceptible to normal blows and wounds than other humans. In gargoyle form, he is nearly impenetrable — and obviously, should he ever get stuck in the sun, he will only be vulnerable to the things which stone is vulnerable (i.e. being completely shattered). With this comes a healing ability, but it only takes affect a) during daylight hours, between dusk and dawn, and b) when John is asleep. Like many of his other gargoyle attributes, this ability is only fully effective when he is in gargoyle form: that is, he must turn into a gargoyle and set himself in the sun to turn to stone to be completely healed of any wounds during the day. Otherwise, daytime sleep allows John to recover from small wounds, bruises, and general fatigue, but not much else.
Climbing. Part and parcel with his superhuman strength, his hands and feet can grip into solid wall/rockface, allowing him to climb up non-wood walls (as long as nobody minds the property damage) with ease. In fact, he often uses this to climb up the towers of the Gothic dorm and brood.
Wings and gargoyle form. Currently suppressed by the alchemical inhibitors given to him by Dr. Magnus, but John is capable of a pseudo-gargoyle form. In it, he grows to about eight feet, sprouts leathery wings, clawed fingers and toes, protruding teeth, stony skin, wide eyes — basically all the traits you might see in a gargoyle sculpture on the side of Gothic architecture. The form has two stages: in the first, John only attains the wings and stone-like skin and claws; in the second, all the other features manifest as well. The inhibitor is primarily crafted to block the second stage, and if John is not careful in taking it every day, twice a day, he will unhappily find himself winged and clawed. Should he abandon the inhibitor completely, he will move into the second stage. It's entirely possible that all of these transformations can be willfully controlled, but as John has barely been a gargoyle thing for a year now, he has no idea. Unfortunately, with the strength and the superhealing and increased agility, all those fun monster things that come with being, well, a monster, also comes the — well, more monstrous traits. The transformation is less a physical change than an actual loss of John's humanity: so with all the positives comes an extremely aggressive, possessive, self-centered, hungry, and violent persona. He isn't an animal, but he thinks and acts in a distinctly non-human manner. This is one of the big reasons he is at the school. Physical deformities are one thing; wanting to tear through small villages is another.
Dollah dollah bills. Dude is loaded. Seriously loaded. He could probably buy a couple of people in the school if he wanted to. Like, as pets. Or furniture.
Piano. Because really, how is he supposed to be a phantom of anything if he can't play eerie sonatas underneath the halls of the academy? This totally counts.</blockquote>
Alliance: Oh God, he has NO IDEA. He can't even remember what BHH and ELE stand for, and literally spent his first month in Neopolis trying to remember what international diplomatic organizations they could be. By attitude alone, one would likely think he has more ELE-leanings, and in some ways, he does: after all, the ELE is generally more accepting of hideous freaks. But it was an unscrupulous ELE alchemist who made him a hideous magical freak, as opposed to just a scarred monstrosity, so he has something of a grudge against them. That being said, he's sure most of the BHH are politicians, and if there's anything his mother taught him, it was never to trust a politician.
Personality:
- John is an angry young man. He is a very angry young man. Can you blame him? Born rich, spoiled, and selfish, only to have it taken away and turned into some kind of Disney-esque vilain? Come on. But he's been angry before then, since his father died. John really had the quintessential "this could never happen to me" mentality of rich white kids. When his father was killed, there wasn't even anyone to be angry at. The driver had been driving perfectly safe; there were no paparazzis tailing the car; no one had been drunk or out of control. The tire blew, and you can't really get mad at a tire. He's been taking it out on everything else since, though he will never admit it. The fire and the accident only added fuel to his rage. He has nowhere to direct it, and no way of controlling it, so he bottles it instead.
- As such, he is also a huge bottler. You can expect half a dozen deleted comments to try and get one out when he's frustrated — and boy, does he ever get frustrated. John's heard it all, from all the best therapists: that it's unhealthy to keep everything bottled, that he's only hurting himself and those he loves, that he needs to talk it out. None of it stops him from keeping a tight lid on any sort of emotional outburst. He maintains flatness and dryness whenever he can.
- While he doesn't want ~love~ and ~companionship~, he is exceptionally lonely. No, he will never admit it; he's not even all that conscious of wanting some kind of relationship, and if he were, he would have no delusions that it would cure his scars or make him any less of an angry, embittered man. But it's a very solitary (self-imposed, really) existence he leads, and it would be nice if someone didn't care about the stony skin or the wings or, most of all, the burn scars. It's part of why he eventually agreed to come to Neopolis instead of buying a castle in Germany and locking himself away for the rest of his life. Surely in a city of crazies, someone would be able to deal with him enough to, say, have lunch. :(
- Ironically, though the gargoyle features are more dramatic than his burns, it's the latter that he finds most distressing. When he was infused with the golem's blood, some of his scars healed over — but he has no chance of being a stony creature by day and some handsome man by night. He will always be less than what he was, and he would rather someone see him in full gargoyle teeth and wings than see any hint of his scars.
- Still, contrary to all of this woe-is-me, brb-locking-myself-in-the-west-wing nonsense, he has a certain chivalrous streak. That is, he is susceptible to nice girls and stupid girls. He used to be known as something of a knight in armor when he was younger and unscarred, though back then it was often as an attempt to woo a girl rather than to just be a good guy. Now that that's gone, the chivalry (or whatever it is) remains, and he often finds himself drawn to looking out for nice and/or dim-witted young women, especially those who have little other sources of overbearing protection. Case in point: Cicely Deacon. While he does little more than tell her to leave him alone and stay away from his room on the network, you can bet that the first person who finds it prudent to threaten/hurt/bother her will be receiving a few nasty visits from an 8-foot gargoyle.
- He is also, with that gargoyle blood in him, noticeably more violent than he was as a normal man. He doesn't bash in skulls or tear people apart with his bare hands, but where he relied on wit and charm (and money) to get him out of situations before, now he tends to rely on the fact that he is a giant, hulking beast. He can crush skulls. He will make you aware of it. And then be completely horrified at himself afterwards. He fits perfectly into that mold, terrified of what he can possibly do while part of him itches to do it. He does not have a lot of angst about these episodes until they happen — but when they happen, they happen in a big way.
- He is completely unafraid to flaunt his money, though not in the way most rich kids do. More in the "oh, my friend is hungry, let me just drop $3.5 million in buying them a chef." He and his family have more money than most people in Neopolis and the ELE elite — but he doesn't flaunt that part. He used to, all the time, and was in the papers more often than not as the "Haupert-Collins Wild Child" when he went to school in England; now he wants to dissociate from that persona as much as he can. It helps that the Collins name does not mean as much in a city of superheroes as it does in the rest of the world, though the rich and affluent will have at least heard of his father's tragic accident.
- But aside from the money, the angst, and the growing darqueness within, he does have his good points. John is profoundly fond of learning (you'd never know; he throws around swear words like it's going out of style and acts like a petulant 12-year-old more often than not), and is slowly rebuilding the soaring library he had in his mother's estate in the ~underground lair~ beneath the Gothic dorms. He is loyal in his own fashion, and treats his servants (particularly Alfred, his very fatherly butler) very well. He also likes puppies.
- He loathes taking his inhibitors. Like an antipsychotic, they make him lethargic and slow-moving, though only for about an hour afterwards. He has "forgotten" to take them before, and likely will again.
History:
- When people say "born into the lap of luxury," they are getting sort of close to the circumstances of John Collin's birth. His mother, Lucille Haupert, was the daughter of a Luxembourgian diplomat and heir to a significant political and financial kingdom; his father, Scott Collins, was the Texan CEO and chairman of multifaced pharmaceutical organization that had recently gone public and made him a billionaire overnight — not to mention his ample family legacy (English peerage? Brother the head of a Big Oil company? His great aunt marrying into the Monacan royalty?). John practically came out of the wound coated in diamonds and dollah dollah bills, and he lived life from that point on without a care in the world. He was sent to the best schools, the best academies, the best equestrian programs, the best fencing tutors; if you think of a rich, European diplomatic stereotype, John filled it with gusto.
- It became pretty clear he was the Prince Henry of the family. His sister Adele showed a keen aptitude for politics while she was still in school, and as their mother took over for their ailing father in the Luxembourgian senate, Adele slid into the aspiring diplomat position with ease. John was still young, but already proving a hellion: he cut classes, was caught smoking hallucinogenic substances at school, and was nearly expelled from Eton when he got into a fight with another boy. The boy had reportedly threatened to sell a doctored photograph of John's sister, and John had not taken it well. Still, the family was relatively happy otherwise. When John wasn't being lectured, he was exceedingly fond of his parents, and seemed to have (at the least the potential for) a good head on his shoulders. His father had every reason to believe John would follow in his footsteps and take over the company one day. In the public eye, outside of John's teenage rebellion, the family were media darlings: Lucille was kind and intelligent, and a very capable replacement for her much-beloved father, while Scott was charismatic and charming — he had his pilot's license, was firmly devoted to his wife, and was incredibly dashing.
- Which, of course, made it all the worse when he was killed. The car accident was just that — an accident — swiftly picked up in the media when his limousine crashed near his offices in Dallas in 2005, but the vast press coverage made it difficult for the family to cope. Lucille made the necessary press conferences, but retreated to her home in Luxembourg almost immediately; Adele, just turned 20, held herself together admirably, and took over in the public eye for her mother. John, on the other hand, did not handle it well at all. He retreated as his mother had, at first, but within months, had begun acting out in a big way. Barely 16 at the time of his father's death, dealing with other stupid things like hormones and thinking about university, John could barely cope. He started big fights; he attacked paparazzi who followed him home; at 17 he got into drugs and all sorts of unsavory company, his grades steadily dropping and his reputation with them; his mother hired every therapist willing to take him to try and get him to cope with his father's death, but there was little she or they could do. John refused to deal with it, and he got worse and worse.
- Things came to a head when he was 18: John had mixed with the wrong sort enough to get him on their bad sides, no matter who his mummy and daddy were. Drunk and coming off E outside a bar in Chelsea, he was attacked by thugs of someone who had mouthed off to recently — he didn't even know who; the friends he was with got free, but John was beaten half to death, set on fire, and left to burn. When he woke up days later in the ICU, he would have 18% of his body covered in third and second degree burns, and lost all usage of his left hand.
- Lucille got him the best surgeons, holding no expense; the Haupert-Collins "wild child" was in the media for weeks as being "on the brink of death." He would live, as it turned out — horribly mutilated, stuck on breathing machines and catheters. Several superhero-doctors suggested she seek some sort of magical or alchemical aid; they didn't know well it would work, but it was an option. But the Collinses had never trusted magicians or superheroes all that much — as was the case with most politicians — and she did not want to put her son's life in the hands of anyone who called themselves The Daring Doctor or some such nonsense. John didn't want anything to do with them; in fact, all he wanted to do was hole up somewhere, maybe die. That would have been nice. He barely participated in his rehab when the doctors laid his dire sentence on him, and after some seven months of John spiraling into depression and his condition worsening, Lucille decided to bite the bullet and seek help outside the medical profession.
- She offered a hefty price to anyone who could heal her son, but the damage was severe: even the strongest healers — of which there were precious few among the BHH, where they went to for aid — didn't think they could regrow a mortal's hand and as much of his skin as had been burned away. Philanthropic healing ventures were largely out of the sphere of interest of the ELE — but the money was not. Healers in the League were few and far between, but the Collinses were ultimately (nearly a year after the accident) acquainted with a less than scrupulus alchemist by the name of Dr. Magnus, who offered a tantalizing solution for their son. He was no healer, but he believed by injecting John with a certain degree of gargoyle blood — from Magnus' loyal gargoyle assistant — and performing a few procedures, he could not only provide the boy an artificial hand, but successfully regrow the scarred skin and tissue and return him to what he once was.
- Needless to say, it didn't go according to plan. Calculations were off, magic and non-magic blood did not mix. John's hand did regrow — bizarrely heavy and stone-like, rough to the touch and of a greyish tint — and some of his scars did heal, but he was hardly whole again. The gargoyle blood made him something of a hybrid: his skin was rough; he was suddenly endowed with superhuman strength; he found himself sporting giant, leathery wings. By daytime, he was lethargic, tired, and weak, and if the sunlight touched his skin, it turned to stone. He felt angrier, rougher, more bestial.
- Dr. Magnus did not get paid.
- John was, from that point on, half-gargoyle. The good doctor provided him an injected inhibitor which, if taken twice daily, would prevent the more bestial traits from presenting — most visibly, the giant wings, but also some of the nastier gargoyle habits and personality quirks — but it did not prevent everything else. John knew, and his family knew, that even though monsters were not an unfamiliar thing in the human world, they were not looked kindly on. It would be impossible for him to return to a normal life. Moreover, his mother and sister could barely relate to him (though that wasn't entirely due to the alchemy), and his sister often expressed a certain fear that her brother was hardly even there anymore.
- So it was off to Neopolis, both to put him in a setting where he might be with others like him, and so he could learn more about how to control his deformity. Lucille Haupert spent months trying to find someone willing to privately tutor her burned, half-gargoyle, vitamin D-impaired sun, but there was no one to take her offer who she at all trusted with her son's care. When February rolled around, though John was older than many of the students, she felt it was her only option to enroll him in the Academy until he could control himself. It was only a family feud that has left him not speaking to his mother that ultimately got him to go.
- He had a single room assigned to him, but he does not often use it. Instead, John lives beneath the school: his mother offered to have a vast estate built for him on the grounds, but the Deans weren't so sure how well that would foster any sort of school unity, let alone fit, and John wasn't happy with anything that could easily expose him to sunlight. So it was with an exceptionally hefty bribe that Mrs. Haupert-Collins paid off the Academy and hired out a team of Neopolitan workmen to create an underground abode for her son. Really, it's a lair, but it's a really fucking nice lair, that extends under the Gothic dorms. There are rooms, bathrooms, ceilings, chandeliers — much like the estate John would have lived in, except that it's beneath the Academy. Many of the secret passageways were connected to it so John could get around when he needed without going outside. Approximately 98% of the school's population doesn't know he even lives down there — that is, when they remember he exists at all.
Played-By: Josh Hartnett.
fun questions!
Aspirations: UH, TO NOT BE A HIDEOUS HALF-GARGOYLE FREAK ANYMORE? TO HAVE A NORMAL LIFE? MAYBE GET LAID AGAIN? THAT WOULD BE NICE.
What would be the title of the comic book starring your character? I am pretty sure he would pay to have the writer murdered before that sucker ever made it to print, actually.
Have you read over all the gamefiles? Is your application complete? Great! Send it over to moc.liamg|ymedacasilopoen#moc.liamg|ymedacasilopoen!
NOTES
- UH, BASICALLY JOHN COLLINS. I imagine his father is some kind of public persona when he's alive, a bit of a playboy before he marries, very devoted to his wife, very handsome and popular — sort of like John Kennedy Jr, or Princess Di. Dies in a car accident (no foul play; just a regular accident), big public mourning period. Possibly a super? Might nix this and have both parents completely normal, so John is something of a new recruit to Neopolis. Would also give John a reason to have an outside degree, but need to go back to trade school to learn about his new abilities. YES I LIKE THIS.
- Very neutral, though inclined towards the ELE, simply because they seem generally more accepting of HIDEOUSLY DEFORMED FREAKS.
- Lol whatever, taking inspiration from the cartoon. The gargoyle's abilities are largely legendary, though they are often employed as guardians for large buildings. Because they do turn to stone at dawn, they must have a place to rest — traditionally, a rooftop, either of a church or town hall or similar; but less scrupulous mages and alchemical scientists began to employ them as something of bodyguards, which meant being stored in the basement — but at night, they are flesh and blood. Still monstrous, but not stone. They are, in modern times, often used as more homunculi or golems, because they have more independent thought than golems/homonculi, who can cause problems with their inability to act on their own and think critically.
- Despite his crazy climbing ability, he still walks with a limp. He doesn't need a cane or a wheelchair or anything, but there is a distinct favoring of his left leg when he walks. And, yeah, with all the layers and the scowling and the hunching, he looks a little like everyone's favorite Gothic dean.
- JOSH HARTNETT: http://starboard.insanejournal.com/12856.html , http://scarletticons.insanejournal.com/9505.html#cutid1 , http://carp.insanejournal.com/12434.html , http://gregorypeck.insanejournal.com/1164.html#cutid1 , http://hollow-art.com/base/josh-hartnett , http://stopwars.insanejournal.com/6810.html , http://smarties.insanejournal.com/661.html , http://asylums.insanejournal.com/lolocon/33425.html , http://asylums.insanejournal.com/icondust/tag/josh+hartnett , also john icons in pictures, obvs.
