app for futurology

[hellshaped]

APPLICANT INFO.
NAME: Theresa
CONTACT: PM or bloodmoney
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a

CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Hellboy
CANON: Hellboy/BPRD
AGE: 63. Appearance-wise, it's a bit hard to place his age since he isn't human; he looks generically "adult" but probably not true to his age.
APPEARANCE: A large red man with hooves and a tail.
CANON POINT: Post-Darkness Calls

BACKGROUND: Wikipedia.

PERSONALITY:
Hellboy appeared in an abandoned English church in a fireball in December, 1944, in the closing days of World War II. He was supposedly summoned to Earth by the Nazis in attempts to tip the scales of war to their favor. Fortunately, he was found by a group of Allied soldiers instead of the Nazis, and spent his childhood at a military base in New Mexico, reading comics, eating pancakes, and generally just being a regular child. It was this kind of childhood that led Hellboy to be the person he is today: a blue collar, average Joe with very little interest in being treated as anything other than human.

Despite being obviously demonic in origins, people are generally only mildly startled by his appearance, if they react at all. This could be due to the fact that Hellboy is a relatively well-known figure (he's been on the cover of LIFE Magazine twice), but more likely it has to do with his personal charisma. He has been known to downplay or joke about his appearance if he notices someone being particularly upset (when being stared at, he flippantly responds, "It's the feet, right? I know, but they get the job done"), and has a very down to earth, easygoing personality. His affable temperament likely comes from the nature of his childhood, where nobody really made too much of a deal about the way he looks (except for that one time). He's humble unless it's in the service of a joke, friendly unless somebody pisses him off, and patient unless he's being ranted at about grand evil plans.

Because he had a very short childhood, Hellboy has been in the paranormal investigating business for a very long time. He has the tendency to be blasé about danger and monsters, but conversations of an emotional nature leave him feeling uncomfortable because he doesn't know how to deal with them; he grew up very fast with an extremely busy caretaker, so he's a little bit emotionally stunted in terms of being somewhat secretive about traumatic events in his past. For example, he only confides to his best friend of 20 years, Abe Sapien, that he has a vision in which he'd seen his true, demonic father and the damning of his mother. In a letter to Abe, he writes:

That's what I saw. I swear that son of a bitch was looking right at me. Did I learn anything? I don't know, maybe... Can't say it made my day. Do me a favor, let's keep this between us for now, alright? Okay. On a lighter note, I hear there have been a few sightings of the West Virginia Moth-Man. That might be something to look into for awhile.

Instead of dealing with the emotional ramifications of this deeply traumatic event, he's downright glib, quickly moving on to talk about some strange phenomenon that might be of interest. He's uncomfortable placing too much emphasis on his own psychic trauma, and doesn't want to bog down his friends with his problems. In a letter written much later, he says vaguely that he's been staying with a friend -- neglecting to mention that this friend is also a ghost and that he had just been sucked into the Baba Yaga's realm and nearly killed, all after having been incommunicado for nine years.

Despite Hellboy's propensity for being emotionally distant, he's very loyal to his friends, and has a soft spot for women and children. Hellboy is attracted to human women, though his appearance and nature as something not quite human hinders him from dating all that much. As of his canon point, Hellboy has only had one romantic relationship (discounting that time he accidentally married a vampire) in his life; the relationship failed because neither of them could properly deal with the disapproval others heaped upon them. Though Hellboy and his ex saw him as a man, the rest of the world saw him as a monster. When they broke up, Hellboy threw himself into his work for months rather than dealing with the emotional fallout. This is something he did a lot in his early days; instead of dealing with something emotionally trying, he would distract himself either with work or alcohol (this is a running theme).

In particular, he's very protective of the misunderstood, of those looked down upon as "freaks" because of their appearance or powers; the Bureau placed a bomb inside the homunculus Roger, a fellow agent, simply because he wasn't human. Being non-human himself, this was the catalyst in Hellboy's decision to quit the Bureau altogether, uncomfortable with the moral ramifications of fighting things that looked like him while still being in the dark about his true nature.

HELLBOY: You know how I live? I never deal with what I am. I don't think about it. I just do my job, which usually involves beating the crap out of things a lot like me. But I don't think about that. I live with my head buried in a hole and that's fine, but then something like this Bromhead thing comes along... it's like I get yanked up out of that hole... and I get a look at my part in the big picture.
KATE: What kind of picture?
HELLBOY: Bad. All I can do is get my head back into that hole... but what if I don't? What if I keep looking at that big picture?

In years past, he avoided all clues to his destiny, preferring to live his life without having that knowledge hanging over him. ("I like not knowing. I've gotten by for fifty-two years without knowing. I sleep good not knowing.") But it eventually came to the point where he couldn't avoid it any longer. These revelations, of course, will lead him to be a miserable drunk for the next few years, so that's something to look forward to.

Hellboy gets easily frustrated during fights, and will become reckless if he gets angry enough -- but normally, he's very even-tempered and prone to joking, though the jokes are sometimes something of a defense mechanism to deflect attention from unfavorable subjects (eg. his face, his name, his origins, etc). He has a dry, dark sense of humor and is a bit deadpan, but if someone spends enough time with him, it's easy to tell when he's kidding about something. Though he's capable of having meaningful conversations with people, he tends to be very impatient with people who are long-winded. When Hecate or any number of vampires, demons, etc., start doing the typical Evil Guy Speech, he will interrupt them and tell them to shut up.

THE BOG ROOSH: For the world to go on living you have to die. That is the simple truth of it. Nothing less. You are the sentence of ruin passed on from the beginning -- Anung un Rama. By setting myself against you, I dare to defy the secret workings of the universe --
HELLBOY: That's great! Sorry to interrupt, but you're literally boring me to death.
THE BOG ROOSH: You are a sad thing.
HELLBOY: Look who's talkin'.

He does not waste words and can be seen as somewhat curt at times. He doesn't hold grudges, and will save someone in life-threatening danger even if he doesn't like them. In this way, he's pretty clear-headed and focused in times of danger, though he's not the best at formulating attack plans while under stress. For the most part, he'll just go in swinging and hope it all works out in the end.

ABILITIES:

HALF-DEMON. These are all supernatural abilities, though they are passive and linked to his physiology/biology and not actually learned or trained skills.

• STRENGTH. Hellboy is really strong. Not Superman strong and maybe not even Thor strong, but strong. He can rip trees out of the ground and throw them like javelins. He regularly punches through walls, tosses large monsters around, and can probably open a jar of pickles without any help. He is also very large (seven feet tall and 400 lbs), so this might just have to do with his sheer size than any kind of supernatural power.


• DURABILITY. He has pretty thick skin (both physically and figuratively, zing) which is more like a hide than anything else, so gentle abrasions don't really happen. He does get stabbed and shot and thrown through walls a lot, though. He is nearly impossible to kill (I say nearly because it's happened in canon. Twice.), and can bleed a lot without dying because he has a lot of blood to begin with. But knock him around enough or put enough bullets in him, and he'll be down for the count just like anybody else. He's not invulnerable, just really tough.


• REGENERATION. Not to the level of Wolverine and his ilk, but Hellboy heals faster than a human. It's not instantaneous; he'll walk around with bandages for awhile if he gets stabbed or shot or set on fire, but things that would put a normal person in the hospital are things that Hellboy can typically shrug off if he slaps a couple bandages on it and takes it easy until he feels better. His bones still break and his flesh still tears, and he can bleed out if he doesn't get it taken care of -- but a papercut will be closed up in less than a day, and bruises don't last very long. He also seems to be immune to viruses, bacteria, infections, etc. He'll only get sick if it's magic (or if he's hungover).


• SURVIVAL. He doesn't actually need to eat, drink, or sleep to live. He still feels hunger and thirst and gets really super cranky if he hasn't slept, but he won't die if he has to go without. Similarly, extreme weather doesn't really bother him too much; his body temperature is naturally quite a bit higher than a human's, so the cold doesn't get to him as much, and extreme heat has never been a real issue either.


• EYESIGHT. Nothing fancy, but he probably has like 20/10 vision. He can't see in the dark or through walls or anything, but he has better eyesight than your average human.


• LUNG CAPACITY. Hellboy is big. Hellboy has big lungs. He can hold his breath for about ten minutes with no ill effects.


• LANGUAGE. Hellboy has a natural understanding of all magical/demonic languages. He can't speak them, but if a fairy or a demon were speaking to him in their natural tongue, he would know what they were saying as if they were speaking plain English.


• NATURE OF THE BEAST. If he fights a dragon, lilies will sprout wherever his blood falls. It's a thing. Don't ask.

THE RIGHT HAND OF DOOM.

• DACCI AB JURA. HEAVEN, HELL, AND HUMAN COME TOGETHER AS ONE. Hellboy's right arm is not actually his right arm. To make a (very) long story short, the arm is older than the world and belongs to what is essentially an angel. But not just any angel -- it belongs to one of the Watchers, and in particular the Watcher who dared to steal the sacred fire from God and fashion its own creation out of the mud and muck of the world. This creation was an utter abomination: the Ogdru Jahad, seven dragons whose only purpose was to destroy. Horrified by what he'd done, naturally the Watcher sealed the dragons with the same hand he used to summon them. Fast forward an unmeasurable amount of time, and you have Hellboy, who has no idea what the arm is or where it came from. Nobody knows what it's for, what it does, or what it's capable of doing. Hellboy usually just uses it as a sledgehammer.
  
  The Right Hand of Doom is invulnerable and feels no pain. If it has any latent magical abilities, they're never shown -- the hand is supposedly the key to releasing the Dragon and ushering in the Apocalypse, but whether Hellboy needs to be connected to the hand while this is happening, well. We never really find that out.

MUNDANE ABILITIES. This are normal, learned abilities that Hellboy has. Most of them are things he has learned in relation to his work with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

• LANGUAGE. Hellboy is a native speaker of English. He is also fluent in French, Spanish, and German. Additionally, he knows Latin and can read Old Lemurian, a script he once used to pass secret notes between himself and his father figure.


• FIREARMS. Hellboy can operate a gun but he is an awful shot. Truly abysmal. It's almost embarrassing.


• SWORDPLAY. Hellboy demonstrates a natural affinity for swordplay, though nothing fancy like fencing. He is also by no means trained in anything like this; I'm mentioning it due to his raw talent. He is more comfortable with a sword than a gun, though he is not often afforded the opportunity to wield them. It follows that he's also comfortable using things like axes, maces, etc. Basically anything he can bash or chop stuff with.


• BRAWLING. I mean, look at him. He's very good at punching stuff.


• PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR. Though he recently retired/quit, Hellboy has 50+ years under his belt as a paranormal investigator. Ghosts, demons, fairies, elves, dragons, aliens, vampires... you name it, and he's probably seen it. And maybe punched it in the face. Even without a dossier or case file, he has an expansive knowledge of folklore, occultism, and mythology, and will probably know how to incapacitate any aggressive paranormal/supernatural being, if not outright destroy it completely.


• VARIOUS. Driving (though his size usually makes this impractical), lockpicking, parachuting, survival skills in various terrains (mountains, desert, arctic, jungle, etc). Knowledge of varying degrees in philosophy, literature, history, criminology, archaeology, anthropology. Rudimentary first aid.

INVENTORY:

• Shorts + belt with a zillion pouches
  
• Tan duster (coat)
  
• Some bandages wrapped around his torso
  
• One (1) 1941 US Army .45 revolver (probably a Colt) in a left-handed holster, with ammunition
  
• Some cigarettes and a matchbook
  
• Loose bullets to a gun he doesn't even have anymore
  
• Various religious and folkloric/superstitious items (charms, medals, talismans, etc.)
  
• Rosary
  
• Several shuriken
  
• One (1) container of holy water
  
• Two (2) waterlogged flares
  
• One (1) incendiary grenade

WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE: IC inbox from Exitvoid. (This is a few years old so let me know if you'd like me to revise.)
LOG SAMPLE: TDM (first thread with Blake).