Adrian Tepes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
draculabutbackwards) wrote2022-03-07 01:16 pm
draculabutbackwards) wrote2022-03-07 01:16 pm
Lovewater App
Your name: Siobhan
Contact(s): plurk
Link to reserve: N/A
Character name: Adrian "Alucard" Tepes
Canon: Netflix Castlevania
Age: 19
Gift from Miss L: Sypha Belnades
Powers and abilities: Normally, Adrian's powers are absolutely ridiculous. Flight and levitation and speed so incredible it's almost teleportation, shapeshifting into a wolf or a burst of bats. He’s hard to damage and very quick to heal, with strength, and enhanced senses such as are basically necessary to keep his ridiculous body together. He will be giving up most of these powers to win extra protection for Sypha, though he'll still be very strong and fast (like, in a human way) and be able to float a bit because, well, he really likes floating.
In his own world he’s a decent spellcaster. He's trained in combat and medicine and has an extensive education. He's half vampire, which is as silly as it sounds and does leave him with goofy fangs and a tendency to hiss like an alley cat in moments of high emotion. He's also approximately half human, and so he avoids most of the worst side effects of being a vampire and can hang out in the sun all he wants, and has only an uncomfortable urge to eat people to pay for it. (He can drink blood, but that’s not really a power. Anybody can do that.)
Personality: Adrian is also Alucard, and his relationship to his two very different names sums up the hot mess pretty nicely. He had a positively idyllic childhood for his time and place, protected, loved, educated, and spoiled. He’s a bit of an alchemical abomination who grew to physical adulthood at a creepy speed, but he’s sure that didn’t effect him negatively. Most of his life was calm, pleasant, and interesting, and he was firmly Adrian Tepes. Then his mother died gruesomely with no one to protect her, his father chose to destroy all intelligent life rather than live without her, and he had no choice but to step into the role of Alucard, the anti-Dracula. Rather than grieve with his family, he was injured so badly he spent a year in a semi-conscious coma underground, and still bears the scars despite magical healing. That horrible crack in the world is at the root of him, still causing tremors and rot, and every awful thing that came after is just salt in that original wound.
Alucard is a hero, in a simple, ugly way, called on to save the world from his own father. He did that. He’s not proud of it. And he had no more help in recovering from it than he did from losing his mother. Should one call on Alucard, one will be defended, mechanically but effectively. He can kill scary things very well. He can even engage with the innocent, helpless humans he’s called on to defend.
But Alucard is deeply unstable. Find him outside a battle, where everything is simple, and you’re as likely to find him immobile in a dark room surrounded by wine bottles as out in the sun picking apples. He hates isolation, but he often chooses it anyway, from shyness and from a vague sense of deserving it. He’s indefatigably patient, but once crossed, he’s just as irrational in his anger as his father, even if he keeps it more focused on his object. The only thing he takes on faith is that everyone will leave him, by betrayal, by learning better than to put up with him, by having better things to do, by simply dying in some violent way because that’s the world he’s used to living in.
He’s brilliant and perhaps the best educated individual alive in his own world, and he can’t tell when he’s being played.
He’s a deeply traumatized teenager with no coping skills who’s seen and used as a magic sword that can walk itself around, and somehow neither violence nor dramatic outfits nor sarcasm nor sobbing on the floor has fixed that. Can’t figure it out.
All that said, he’s friendly, soft, and sweet when he allows himself to be. He remembers being Adrian the spoiled pet of an only child in a castle of wonders, Adrian the studious and quiet. His icy composure is how he avoids vulnerability when people come looking for Alucard, and also it’s funny. But he sincerely thinks that’s how a sensible, together person acts. It’s not a terribly difficult shell to pierce, but it does take work. He adopted a pack of orphans the first chance he got. He made little dolls of his friends when he got lonely. He’s a gentle, loving, delicate thing who’s had no choice but to spend the latter part of his life fighting endless waves of monsters, and also his own father. He needs a little time to relax, and to stop trying to bear the weight of the world on broken shoulders, but he’s ready to be better.
Reactions to Lovewater: Adrian will firmly believe on arrival that this will be easy. He will be extremely wrong.
In protecting Sypha and her unborn child, he has all the motivation he needs to stick this out, and he took the offer without a lot of thought (he is, after all, from a world with tons of magical nonsense and a giant spacetime corridor just lying around). It seemed too good to be true. Go to a place, meet people, be fond of them, leave with magical protection for his best friend and an apology to the friend he couldn't save. And historically, Adrian has had, generously, a pretty easy heart to touch. He's managed to develop a crush more or less immediately on every person his own age he's actually spent time with. And apparently pining works! He doesn't even need to do anything about it!
He is simply choosing not to acknowledge that among the five people he's fallen readily and enthusiastically in love with at first sight, the only two who ever touched him also tried to kill him. He has some serious issues with intimacy and vulnerability that he is simply telling himself he doesn't, because that would complicate this good and straightforward plan.
He's not hopeless. Gentleness and patience will probably do the trick if anyone wants to draw him out to where he's comfortable. But until and unless that happens, he's likely to throw up walls and freeze a lot, find perfectly good reasons that definitely hold up why things aren't working, and generally make a mess for a while.
History: Main history
Adrian is coming from very nearly the end of season four, after the fight with Death but before Trevor's return. He's just lost one of the most important people left in the world for him, has a whole village to protect in a world still swarming with monsters, and of the two remaining friends he has (to his knowledge), one is both mourning deeply and pregnant and the other is, however hastily trauma-bonded, an unknown quantity. A way to guarantee Sypha's safety and get a few moments to breathe outside time for the simple price of having emotions about strangers sounds very appealing in this moment of extremis.
Sample 1:
Cyberpunk AU: Adrian's place in a dark, strangely lit, vastly unfair world of exploitation and power abused is pretty straightforward. Son of an independent corporate overlord who was never benevolent but who did love his little family, he grew up safe from the depredations of pollution, crime, and crowding, but not unaware of them. His mother didn't confine herself to just distant charity but got into the trenches as a medic and brought Adrian with her. She also insisted he learn practical skills, so while he can disappear into programming as well as his father and has almost the man's genius.
His childhood ended abruptly when his mother, vulnerable due to her work in the city, was abducted and killed by a rival of his father's as revenge for a ruthless corporate takeover. His father responded by tightening what had been a loose grip on their little piece of the global megacity, wiping out "crime" and also making it nearly impossible for anybody to do things like live, turning the company's resources toward surveillance and militarizing his security force. When Adrian protested he was kicked out, only to join a group of hackers determined to take his father down. They succeeded, but at what price?
Sample 2: Adrian, it's important to remember, is here from the fifteenth century. What looks rather hokey and dated to many eyes have even him occasionally just frozen in surprise. Strangely enough, it's not usually the technology. The castle and his father's ancient, lost knowledge were full of wonders from which one can reasonably extrapolate things like phones and cars. It's the little things. Impossibly smooth glass that goes on forever, doing nothing more important than making the lobby of an office building look cheerful. Cheap, uniform books with colorful spines and flawless print, all alike in a row.
Chocolate.
Not just chocolate, but cumin and coriander, black pepper and pink salt, baking powder and aerosolized oil. Sometimes he just stops mid-aisle in the grocery store, just gaping at the king's ransom in little plastic jars. He's always seen himself as a good cook, but up to now that's meant catching his own fish, gleaning his own mushrooms and wild carrots, and getting really excited for a patch of parsley.
He tries for restraint, but a lot of those little jars are going in his basket. He doesn't know what half of them do, but he's going to find out. Turmeric is a cheerful color. Paprika sounds exciting. He's pretty sure he's heard of mace...
Contact(s): plurk
Link to reserve: N/A
Character name: Adrian "Alucard" Tepes
Canon: Netflix Castlevania
Age: 19
Gift from Miss L: Sypha Belnades
Powers and abilities: Normally, Adrian's powers are absolutely ridiculous. Flight and levitation and speed so incredible it's almost teleportation, shapeshifting into a wolf or a burst of bats. He’s hard to damage and very quick to heal, with strength, and enhanced senses such as are basically necessary to keep his ridiculous body together. He will be giving up most of these powers to win extra protection for Sypha, though he'll still be very strong and fast (like, in a human way) and be able to float a bit because, well, he really likes floating.
In his own world he’s a decent spellcaster. He's trained in combat and medicine and has an extensive education. He's half vampire, which is as silly as it sounds and does leave him with goofy fangs and a tendency to hiss like an alley cat in moments of high emotion. He's also approximately half human, and so he avoids most of the worst side effects of being a vampire and can hang out in the sun all he wants, and has only an uncomfortable urge to eat people to pay for it. (He can drink blood, but that’s not really a power. Anybody can do that.)
Personality: Adrian is also Alucard, and his relationship to his two very different names sums up the hot mess pretty nicely. He had a positively idyllic childhood for his time and place, protected, loved, educated, and spoiled. He’s a bit of an alchemical abomination who grew to physical adulthood at a creepy speed, but he’s sure that didn’t effect him negatively. Most of his life was calm, pleasant, and interesting, and he was firmly Adrian Tepes. Then his mother died gruesomely with no one to protect her, his father chose to destroy all intelligent life rather than live without her, and he had no choice but to step into the role of Alucard, the anti-Dracula. Rather than grieve with his family, he was injured so badly he spent a year in a semi-conscious coma underground, and still bears the scars despite magical healing. That horrible crack in the world is at the root of him, still causing tremors and rot, and every awful thing that came after is just salt in that original wound.
Alucard is a hero, in a simple, ugly way, called on to save the world from his own father. He did that. He’s not proud of it. And he had no more help in recovering from it than he did from losing his mother. Should one call on Alucard, one will be defended, mechanically but effectively. He can kill scary things very well. He can even engage with the innocent, helpless humans he’s called on to defend.
But Alucard is deeply unstable. Find him outside a battle, where everything is simple, and you’re as likely to find him immobile in a dark room surrounded by wine bottles as out in the sun picking apples. He hates isolation, but he often chooses it anyway, from shyness and from a vague sense of deserving it. He’s indefatigably patient, but once crossed, he’s just as irrational in his anger as his father, even if he keeps it more focused on his object. The only thing he takes on faith is that everyone will leave him, by betrayal, by learning better than to put up with him, by having better things to do, by simply dying in some violent way because that’s the world he’s used to living in.
He’s brilliant and perhaps the best educated individual alive in his own world, and he can’t tell when he’s being played.
He’s a deeply traumatized teenager with no coping skills who’s seen and used as a magic sword that can walk itself around, and somehow neither violence nor dramatic outfits nor sarcasm nor sobbing on the floor has fixed that. Can’t figure it out.
All that said, he’s friendly, soft, and sweet when he allows himself to be. He remembers being Adrian the spoiled pet of an only child in a castle of wonders, Adrian the studious and quiet. His icy composure is how he avoids vulnerability when people come looking for Alucard, and also it’s funny. But he sincerely thinks that’s how a sensible, together person acts. It’s not a terribly difficult shell to pierce, but it does take work. He adopted a pack of orphans the first chance he got. He made little dolls of his friends when he got lonely. He’s a gentle, loving, delicate thing who’s had no choice but to spend the latter part of his life fighting endless waves of monsters, and also his own father. He needs a little time to relax, and to stop trying to bear the weight of the world on broken shoulders, but he’s ready to be better.
Reactions to Lovewater: Adrian will firmly believe on arrival that this will be easy. He will be extremely wrong.
In protecting Sypha and her unborn child, he has all the motivation he needs to stick this out, and he took the offer without a lot of thought (he is, after all, from a world with tons of magical nonsense and a giant spacetime corridor just lying around). It seemed too good to be true. Go to a place, meet people, be fond of them, leave with magical protection for his best friend and an apology to the friend he couldn't save. And historically, Adrian has had, generously, a pretty easy heart to touch. He's managed to develop a crush more or less immediately on every person his own age he's actually spent time with. And apparently pining works! He doesn't even need to do anything about it!
He is simply choosing not to acknowledge that among the five people he's fallen readily and enthusiastically in love with at first sight, the only two who ever touched him also tried to kill him. He has some serious issues with intimacy and vulnerability that he is simply telling himself he doesn't, because that would complicate this good and straightforward plan.
He's not hopeless. Gentleness and patience will probably do the trick if anyone wants to draw him out to where he's comfortable. But until and unless that happens, he's likely to throw up walls and freeze a lot, find perfectly good reasons that definitely hold up why things aren't working, and generally make a mess for a while.
History: Main history
Adrian is coming from very nearly the end of season four, after the fight with Death but before Trevor's return. He's just lost one of the most important people left in the world for him, has a whole village to protect in a world still swarming with monsters, and of the two remaining friends he has (to his knowledge), one is both mourning deeply and pregnant and the other is, however hastily trauma-bonded, an unknown quantity. A way to guarantee Sypha's safety and get a few moments to breathe outside time for the simple price of having emotions about strangers sounds very appealing in this moment of extremis.
Sample 1:
Cyberpunk AU: Adrian's place in a dark, strangely lit, vastly unfair world of exploitation and power abused is pretty straightforward. Son of an independent corporate overlord who was never benevolent but who did love his little family, he grew up safe from the depredations of pollution, crime, and crowding, but not unaware of them. His mother didn't confine herself to just distant charity but got into the trenches as a medic and brought Adrian with her. She also insisted he learn practical skills, so while he can disappear into programming as well as his father and has almost the man's genius.
His childhood ended abruptly when his mother, vulnerable due to her work in the city, was abducted and killed by a rival of his father's as revenge for a ruthless corporate takeover. His father responded by tightening what had been a loose grip on their little piece of the global megacity, wiping out "crime" and also making it nearly impossible for anybody to do things like live, turning the company's resources toward surveillance and militarizing his security force. When Adrian protested he was kicked out, only to join a group of hackers determined to take his father down. They succeeded, but at what price?
Sample 2: Adrian, it's important to remember, is here from the fifteenth century. What looks rather hokey and dated to many eyes have even him occasionally just frozen in surprise. Strangely enough, it's not usually the technology. The castle and his father's ancient, lost knowledge were full of wonders from which one can reasonably extrapolate things like phones and cars. It's the little things. Impossibly smooth glass that goes on forever, doing nothing more important than making the lobby of an office building look cheerful. Cheap, uniform books with colorful spines and flawless print, all alike in a row.
Chocolate.
Not just chocolate, but cumin and coriander, black pepper and pink salt, baking powder and aerosolized oil. Sometimes he just stops mid-aisle in the grocery store, just gaping at the king's ransom in little plastic jars. He's always seen himself as a good cook, but up to now that's meant catching his own fish, gleaning his own mushrooms and wild carrots, and getting really excited for a patch of parsley.
He tries for restraint, but a lot of those little jars are going in his basket. He doesn't know what half of them do, but he's going to find out. Turmeric is a cheerful color. Paprika sounds exciting. He's pretty sure he's heard of mace...