Ben Hargreeves (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hauntedcalamari) wrote2019-03-17 07:08 pm
hauntedcalamari) wrote2019-03-17 07:08 pm
TLV application
User Name/Nick: Siobhan
User DW:fiercebadrabbit
E-mail: israfel1030@gmail.com
Other Characters: Bodhi, Entrapta
Character Name: Ben Hargreeves
Series: Umbrella Academy
Age: 31 (years in existence, some of them spent dead)
From When?: End of season 2
Warden: Ben is used to being a caretaker. He couldn’t save his brother, but he did arguably preserve the stupid idiot from complete destruction, and he's managed to reach out to at least a few other siblings despite being a ghost. He has the patience of the dead, even with a pulse, and while he’s not the most even-tempered person, exactly, he does possess a powerful moral core and a refusal to give up on it. His years as a ghost only able to communicate with a single person lost him any sense of tact or delicacy, but while he’ll voice any unflattering opinion or weird thought, he’s completely willing to be a corny, inspirational moron if the situation calls for it and he believes in the cause. Besides, he has motivation. Caring about his inmate and not wanting to watch anybody else destroy themself is great and all, but his world in general and his family in particular are a mess, and now he's given up his chance to help them. Just try and out-stubborn a Hargreeves with shit to do, future inmate.
Item: An Umbrella Academy comic book in lurid, cheaply printed colors
Abilities/Powers: Ben is the doorway to a dimension full of cephalodpods. When he so chooses (and sometimes when he’s surprised or frightened, since he’s very much out of practice), he can open the door and summon as many as four giant, superstrong tentacles that can extend about twenty feet out.
Personality: Ben has been dead a long time. The person he was before that, young and naive and desperate to please, trying quite against his shy and gentle nature to be a tough, dangerous super hero and a public figure, is long gone, but he hasn’t had any adult life in any appreciable way. He improved some when he was on the barge before, but chances were limited. He doesn’t know how to navigate relationships very well or even really how to talk to people who aren’t family. He has never had a relationship or a job, paid an electric bill or fixed a sink. He has no idea how to live independently or structure his life, to pursue goals he sets on his own, though he's very determined to acquire all these accomplishments now that he knows they're missing. He was an obedient teenage superhero whose every physical need was attended to by money and a devoted stepford robot. He is vastly immature in many ways, not through any fault of his own (nobody chooses to die young and violently), but inescapably.
Ben’s only contact in his years as a ghost was his brother, the world’s worst necromancer. Klaus kept him on the same plane of existence, gave him a chance to continue to be part of the family, in whatever shadow of his former capacity. He loves Klaus devotedly, the one who never let him go. He’s indefatigably devoted and aggressively protective. He also despises the fuckup and resents his place as eternal companion to a self-destructive addict. And is viciously angry at the rest of the family for letting Klaus destroy himself. And loves them, too.
Sure, every Hargreeves is a mess of traumatized and stunted bullshit born of a miserable childhood full of manipulation and neglect. He’s just taken that in his own special direction. He’s entirely too much in the habit of being the only reasonable (and sober) person in the room, inclined to see himself as being as superior in reasoning and planning capacity to everyone as he is to his usually chemically altered and always emotionally unstable brother. Having never been listened to or been able to test most of his ideas, he’s been free to develop a bit of a Cassandra complex, a certainty that he’s always right and if people just listened everything would be fine. His complete lack of practical experience at being a human doesn’t occur to him as a roadblock to that.
\
There are things he’s more aware he’s missed out on. Being an actual adult, having his own life, hell, eating food and riding roller coasters and all the cool bullshit you need a body to do. He is perfectly aware of what he’s lost (and what he might be able to experience again, leading to a potential hedonistic streak once he has one again). He resents that as much as any dead guy. But he has bigger problems, like the world ending and protecting his stupid idiot family. Having chosen to give up his half-existence to save Vanya, he's not sure how he's supposed to do that anymore, but he's going to figure it out.
As much as he’s still looking for a mission, Ben has grown very cynical. The adult he suddenly has a chance to be has lost some of the softness, the eagerness to please, the sweetness of the child. He’s a sometimes softie with brittle edges, determined to do the right thing, never eager to hurt anyone, even prone to occasional bouts of downright childlike whimsy. Once he and his brothers stole an icecream truck and reprogrammed it to play “Ride of the Valkyries” while they rode to a few more brothers’ rescue. It was great.
It’s just that the sweet and the silly is wrapped up tight in cynicism and sharpness, the only armor a dead guy who can’t be heard by most of the world can work himself up to. He’s shy, too, never great with people and now deeply out of practice, unsure of what he wants or how to get it, skittish around anything that reminds him of his teenage super hero career and the discomfort that always went with it. He’s at peace with his powers when he decides how to use them, but their combat applications always made him stressed and unhappy. His preferred use, incidentally, is being annoying.
Barge Reactions: Ben is returning with his barge memories and has dealt with most of this shit before. Completely absurd situations are normal for him, and the existence of alternate realities is something he’s pretty comfortable with, since alternate realities stick tentacles through his torso all the time and he's traveled back and forth between decades more than once. His brother lived on the moon for a while. His sister has mind control powers. The weirdness won’t bother him. The loss of agency that comes with floods and breaches, however, will. He’s spent too much time with no power over his own fate.
Deal: He has to figure out what happened after he double-died first, and he's hoping at least a few more siblings will turn up to help him. He has a few theories from his first time aboard; Re-assigning powers so his sister will have something harmlessly dumb like superspeed instead of world-destroying, mind-overtaking destruction. Keeping his brother from getting lost in time in the first place, keeping them all together longer and maybe more able to prevent the worst. Taking their father out of the picture so they can grow up as normally as horrible magic power babies can. He hasn’t picked exactly what would be the best way to change all their lives for the better, but every idea is trying to fix what’s wrong with all of them, finding some kind of root to everyone’s misery and fixing a family that breaks over and over again. None of his ideas involve reversing his own death. He figures his chances will improve with any choice he makes, but that’s not the most important part.
History: Here
Sample Journal Entry: [Ben looks aggressively bland and casual. Well, he tries. He's mostly doing a bad job of hiding a grin.]
I don't know who's on kitchen staff now, but I could fucking murder a stack of waffles right now. If a welcome back present is up for grabs, I mean. Not the frozen junk, the ones the size of an airport novel with six different toppings. Blueberry syrup, maybe? I can't remember if that actually tastes good or just sounds good.
Anyway, if anybody wants me I'll be in the greenhouse having a touching things weird party. Dead guys only, unless you're cool.
[The video resumes half an hour later, Ben lying on his back in the grass, tossing an apple like a kid bouncing a tennis ball off the garage. Still with that cat that ate the canary smile.]
I read somewhere that bass guitar is the easiest to learn if you're an adult without, uh, neuroplasticity or whatever. Is that true? Does anybody know how to play bass? Everybody needs a bassist, right?
[About ten minutes after that, still wandering the greenhouse.]
Hey, are there any other Hargreeveses around? I forgot to ask. We tend to happen in clusters. Precedent and stuff.
[An hour later, on deck.]
I changed my mind, chocolate syrup all the way.
[That's the last random burst of wild enthusiasm for living. For now. There's a wave from something inky and indistinct as he signs off.]
Sample RP: Just as soon as he's kicked off his shoes and thrown himself face-first into the nearest patch of dirt, Ben has another bit of stretching to do. He's not sure if it's his time in the sixties (the lame part of the sixties) wore out his inhibitions a little or if it's just the sharpened awareness of a second chance, but he has no intention of keeping the extradimensional side of himself under wraps. Like, it wasn't a secret before or anything, but he feels a bit readier to let his freak flag fly.
It's pretty literal as these things go. He unzips his jacket about six inches to let one tentacle end out to explore, pops another through his wrist to poke out of his sleeve. The sensation isn't exactly his, but there's as much enjoyment to be had from poking plant life with the spooky tendrils as boring old fingers.
Ha. Fingers will never be boring. Ben is amused enough between a few forms of living sensory input that he does walk straight into the pond. Last time he arrived he walked into walls. It's fine. Even wet pant hems are an experience lost to the dead. Worth another grin. He considers a moment and takes a seat, soaking his feet and one tentacle, just being alive for a bit.
Special Notes: Ben is returning with full memories from his last time on the barge.
User DW:
fiercebadrabbit E-mail: israfel1030@gmail.com
Other Characters: Bodhi, Entrapta
Character Name: Ben Hargreeves
Series: Umbrella Academy
Age: 31 (years in existence, some of them spent dead)
From When?: End of season 2
Warden: Ben is used to being a caretaker. He couldn’t save his brother, but he did arguably preserve the stupid idiot from complete destruction, and he's managed to reach out to at least a few other siblings despite being a ghost. He has the patience of the dead, even with a pulse, and while he’s not the most even-tempered person, exactly, he does possess a powerful moral core and a refusal to give up on it. His years as a ghost only able to communicate with a single person lost him any sense of tact or delicacy, but while he’ll voice any unflattering opinion or weird thought, he’s completely willing to be a corny, inspirational moron if the situation calls for it and he believes in the cause. Besides, he has motivation. Caring about his inmate and not wanting to watch anybody else destroy themself is great and all, but his world in general and his family in particular are a mess, and now he's given up his chance to help them. Just try and out-stubborn a Hargreeves with shit to do, future inmate.
Item: An Umbrella Academy comic book in lurid, cheaply printed colors
Abilities/Powers: Ben is the doorway to a dimension full of cephalodpods. When he so chooses (and sometimes when he’s surprised or frightened, since he’s very much out of practice), he can open the door and summon as many as four giant, superstrong tentacles that can extend about twenty feet out.
Personality: Ben has been dead a long time. The person he was before that, young and naive and desperate to please, trying quite against his shy and gentle nature to be a tough, dangerous super hero and a public figure, is long gone, but he hasn’t had any adult life in any appreciable way. He improved some when he was on the barge before, but chances were limited. He doesn’t know how to navigate relationships very well or even really how to talk to people who aren’t family. He has never had a relationship or a job, paid an electric bill or fixed a sink. He has no idea how to live independently or structure his life, to pursue goals he sets on his own, though he's very determined to acquire all these accomplishments now that he knows they're missing. He was an obedient teenage superhero whose every physical need was attended to by money and a devoted stepford robot. He is vastly immature in many ways, not through any fault of his own (nobody chooses to die young and violently), but inescapably.
Ben’s only contact in his years as a ghost was his brother, the world’s worst necromancer. Klaus kept him on the same plane of existence, gave him a chance to continue to be part of the family, in whatever shadow of his former capacity. He loves Klaus devotedly, the one who never let him go. He’s indefatigably devoted and aggressively protective. He also despises the fuckup and resents his place as eternal companion to a self-destructive addict. And is viciously angry at the rest of the family for letting Klaus destroy himself. And loves them, too.
Sure, every Hargreeves is a mess of traumatized and stunted bullshit born of a miserable childhood full of manipulation and neglect. He’s just taken that in his own special direction. He’s entirely too much in the habit of being the only reasonable (and sober) person in the room, inclined to see himself as being as superior in reasoning and planning capacity to everyone as he is to his usually chemically altered and always emotionally unstable brother. Having never been listened to or been able to test most of his ideas, he’s been free to develop a bit of a Cassandra complex, a certainty that he’s always right and if people just listened everything would be fine. His complete lack of practical experience at being a human doesn’t occur to him as a roadblock to that.
\
There are things he’s more aware he’s missed out on. Being an actual adult, having his own life, hell, eating food and riding roller coasters and all the cool bullshit you need a body to do. He is perfectly aware of what he’s lost (and what he might be able to experience again, leading to a potential hedonistic streak once he has one again). He resents that as much as any dead guy. But he has bigger problems, like the world ending and protecting his stupid idiot family. Having chosen to give up his half-existence to save Vanya, he's not sure how he's supposed to do that anymore, but he's going to figure it out.
As much as he’s still looking for a mission, Ben has grown very cynical. The adult he suddenly has a chance to be has lost some of the softness, the eagerness to please, the sweetness of the child. He’s a sometimes softie with brittle edges, determined to do the right thing, never eager to hurt anyone, even prone to occasional bouts of downright childlike whimsy. Once he and his brothers stole an icecream truck and reprogrammed it to play “Ride of the Valkyries” while they rode to a few more brothers’ rescue. It was great.
It’s just that the sweet and the silly is wrapped up tight in cynicism and sharpness, the only armor a dead guy who can’t be heard by most of the world can work himself up to. He’s shy, too, never great with people and now deeply out of practice, unsure of what he wants or how to get it, skittish around anything that reminds him of his teenage super hero career and the discomfort that always went with it. He’s at peace with his powers when he decides how to use them, but their combat applications always made him stressed and unhappy. His preferred use, incidentally, is being annoying.
Barge Reactions: Ben is returning with his barge memories and has dealt with most of this shit before. Completely absurd situations are normal for him, and the existence of alternate realities is something he’s pretty comfortable with, since alternate realities stick tentacles through his torso all the time and he's traveled back and forth between decades more than once. His brother lived on the moon for a while. His sister has mind control powers. The weirdness won’t bother him. The loss of agency that comes with floods and breaches, however, will. He’s spent too much time with no power over his own fate.
Deal: He has to figure out what happened after he double-died first, and he's hoping at least a few more siblings will turn up to help him. He has a few theories from his first time aboard; Re-assigning powers so his sister will have something harmlessly dumb like superspeed instead of world-destroying, mind-overtaking destruction. Keeping his brother from getting lost in time in the first place, keeping them all together longer and maybe more able to prevent the worst. Taking their father out of the picture so they can grow up as normally as horrible magic power babies can. He hasn’t picked exactly what would be the best way to change all their lives for the better, but every idea is trying to fix what’s wrong with all of them, finding some kind of root to everyone’s misery and fixing a family that breaks over and over again. None of his ideas involve reversing his own death. He figures his chances will improve with any choice he makes, but that’s not the most important part.
History: Here
Sample Journal Entry: [Ben looks aggressively bland and casual. Well, he tries. He's mostly doing a bad job of hiding a grin.]
I don't know who's on kitchen staff now, but I could fucking murder a stack of waffles right now. If a welcome back present is up for grabs, I mean. Not the frozen junk, the ones the size of an airport novel with six different toppings. Blueberry syrup, maybe? I can't remember if that actually tastes good or just sounds good.
Anyway, if anybody wants me I'll be in the greenhouse having a touching things weird party. Dead guys only, unless you're cool.
[The video resumes half an hour later, Ben lying on his back in the grass, tossing an apple like a kid bouncing a tennis ball off the garage. Still with that cat that ate the canary smile.]
I read somewhere that bass guitar is the easiest to learn if you're an adult without, uh, neuroplasticity or whatever. Is that true? Does anybody know how to play bass? Everybody needs a bassist, right?
[About ten minutes after that, still wandering the greenhouse.]
Hey, are there any other Hargreeveses around? I forgot to ask. We tend to happen in clusters. Precedent and stuff.
[An hour later, on deck.]
I changed my mind, chocolate syrup all the way.
[That's the last random burst of wild enthusiasm for living. For now. There's a wave from something inky and indistinct as he signs off.]
Sample RP: Just as soon as he's kicked off his shoes and thrown himself face-first into the nearest patch of dirt, Ben has another bit of stretching to do. He's not sure if it's his time in the sixties (the lame part of the sixties) wore out his inhibitions a little or if it's just the sharpened awareness of a second chance, but he has no intention of keeping the extradimensional side of himself under wraps. Like, it wasn't a secret before or anything, but he feels a bit readier to let his freak flag fly.
It's pretty literal as these things go. He unzips his jacket about six inches to let one tentacle end out to explore, pops another through his wrist to poke out of his sleeve. The sensation isn't exactly his, but there's as much enjoyment to be had from poking plant life with the spooky tendrils as boring old fingers.
Ha. Fingers will never be boring. Ben is amused enough between a few forms of living sensory input that he does walk straight into the pond. Last time he arrived he walked into walls. It's fine. Even wet pant hems are an experience lost to the dead. Worth another grin. He considers a moment and takes a seat, soaking his feet and one tentacle, just being alive for a bit.
Special Notes: Ben is returning with full memories from his last time on the barge.