Handyman. Hunter of the Supernatural? Man oughta come with a warning label.

Started by TheKnifeWon, March 17, 2014, 10:26:12 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

TheKnifeWon

Dreamin' of a killer while he dances on your door. . .

Davan Shaw is a nice country boy. This is what he wants you to believe. Chances are, in the right scenario, this is what you will believe. He plays the role perfectly. He is the boyfriend your grandmother wants you to bring home. . .even if you're a man. He can finally fix that fucked up stair on the back porch. He knows his way around a gun. He looks like he's going to be there for you when your world turns upside down. He has a good singing voice. He has a wide variety of skills, both practical and social. He could do anything he wanted in life and do it well and make money doing it.

He chose the road, though. He looked into the dark, wet distance and he chose the hunt. Sometimes he plays at something else. Sometimes he'll stay in a place for months, fixing up properties, ingratiating himself with the neighbors. But he belongs to the road. He always chooses it, in the end. You will never win.

But. . .that's OK, right? This is a roller coaster you are definitely high enough to ride.

HISTORY

This was not the family business. Far as his family was concerned, it was no one's business but the cops'. Some sick bastard had taken her heart out, sure; didn't mean it was anything weirder. They understood his desire to get to the bottom of it, but when he started obsessing over the layers of claw that had torn off on the way through her breast, they tried to dissuade him. It was just some trick of a budding serial killer, a weird signature they wanted to leave. People were sick and desperate for fame, after all, and if this would get true crime books written about them in the future, everything would be worth it. Sleepless nights scouring the internet for answers had finally turned up something that felt like an answer. Werewolves ate hearts. It wasn't a compulsion he recalled from the horror movies he watched as a kid, but when it went on to say they met their end through a silver knife, he knew what he had to do.

He'd spent too many nights listening to Delilah cry for want of her mama, cradling her uselessly in his arms and remembering all the articles he'd read during Jacqueline's pregnancy about how children bonded with their parents. At such a young age, the strongest bond the baby had was with her mother. The smell comforted an infant. It was a thing gone from this world, torn out with her heart by that ugly fucking beast. Daddy's arms would never be good enough. Even singing the most delicate lullabies, she'd calm only so long as it took for him to close his own eyes, at which point she'd start in again. With that possibility burning in his blood, determination to make sure this did not become the serial event his family claimed, he knew fatherhood had been taken from him, too. He couldn't hack it, wouldn't be so irresponsible as to take a tiny baby out on the road. She was dropped off at her aunt's, ostensibly for just a few days, while he got his head screwed on straight.

Instead, he drove off and never returned. Sometimes, he thought maybe he'd overreacted, that what some hunters said about it being a calling was bullshit. He'd left behind what could've been a good life, even with that heartbreak. He'd stood to inherit his father's contracting business and had already been at worksites for years, helping out, learning the ins and outs of the work. Chances were he wouldn't have been ready to take over the position til about now, as it happened, but his portion of the work made a fine enough wage. If he hadn't felt so sure in that month of mourning, he might have bloomed into a fine father, maybe even found some other girl to marry, act as a mother to Delilah. He knew too many families who'd been torn apart somehow than to think doing so would be a betrayal to Jackie's memory. Sometimes, life happened and it happened hard and people did what they had to do to get by; nothing wrong with that. If she was looking down from Heaven, it was knowing that she was not on Earth; she would understand. She'd been a practical woman.

Mostly, though, there was the righteousness. He sniffed out a dozen more werewolves, moon-bound to do the same thing to some other family as their brethren had done to his. He found countless ghosts, snuffing the lives of teenagers just for being teenaged enough to make good on dares, never given the chance to age and wise up. Vampires turning sleepy villages into monsters' nests. Deeply dark modern-day mages sacrificing little girls to some formless, demonic entity. It wasn't vengeance that continued to motivate him, for he was lucky enough that his first kill was precisely what he wanted, far as he could tell, considering there were no witnesses. No, he'd just pointed his car toward home and thought of all the other families that thing might have ruined, all the heartache and nightmares and uncertainty, and couldn't bring himself to go. He looped around down the highway instead; he was going to need more guns.

He learned to be dirty, after a while. He'd tried earning an honest wage at first, answering internet ads for handiwork and busking where he could find a good pitch - he'd always had a good, strong baritone - but the money just wasn't enough, not if he was going to keep gassed up, keep himself in weapons and all the different odds and ends a hunter needed to do his job. His eyes could go hard, now, hard and cold in a way that was impossible to read and hard to ignore, and he used that, won half his gambles legitimately and the other through a smoothly inserted card with marks too drunk to bother counting what remained. In recent years, he'd begun stealing identities, just a little; working his way in to get credentials and slyly add one of his aliases to the list of approved users on a credit card. Meeting an older hunter after a job, cradling some broken part of himself, he'd learned how to find just the right match for himself in health insurance, too; right age, right history where there wouldn't be too many questions asked. If the only people he was cheating were the rich and stupid, the lives he was saving ripe with potential, was any of it truly a moral crime? Sometimes, the spooks have money, have weird artifacts that fetch a nice price at the right pawn shop. Lifting those, he doesn't even think twice; they're practically trophies he melts down into cash.

Learning mostly from the hunters he met along the way, he doesn't have much by way of sympathy for the monsters he hunts down. With his first experience of that world being the murder of his wife, why would he? There were times, though, that he saw the beast-as-man and then killed him as beast, and wondered what horror it had to be to lose control like that. More experience, more research, more conversations and he learned that was true of werewolves especially; it took them years to get to a place where they remembered what they'd done. They woke up with strange aches otherwise, bruises and cuts. Thinking these things didn't make him hesitate to thrust the knife in and twist; it just made sure his other hand held them, deepened the satisfaction he felt in doing it. He'd ended their nightmare. In his mind, even the more articulate spooks were no longer their own people, driven grotesque and immoral by curses or unnatural lust for power. The men they'd been were gone, or who they wanted to be never available to them at all. They'd never find happiness in this world. Better to send them to the next and see what happened. Lives were saved and suffering soothed.

SEEKING

Firstly: I do not want to play Davan with nonhuman characters. Not werewolves, not vampires, not demons, not elementals, not shapechangers, not anything. Such characters should appear in RP only as marks. He is the most charming man on the planet to humans. . .and the biggest, most closed-minded bigot on the planet to "spooks". If this is ever going to change, it is not going to happen yet.

With recent character developments, I have decided that Davan is uniquely equipped for short, passionate romances. He rolls into town, maybe just working as a handyman, but maybe being somebody's savior, too, and. . .oh, the idiot man. He'll stick around to try and make sure a would-be victim doesn't lose their damn mind because the thought of a life he saved being nonetheless ruined breaks his heart. So he stays in town. He checks up. He reminds them that they lived for years without incident, says they can keep an eye out, keep his number if something comes up, but for love of God, do not start down his same road.

Re: hunting scenes, I am still looking for relatively small-fry scenarios. Ghosts, werewolves, vampires, low level demons, random invented monsters that are scarier than they are difficult to kill, maybe a shtriga or something. While Davan is usually tromping in to save the day, I am not at all opposed to it being the other way around. I've had this image of him having been chained up and in the early stages of some torture scenario by a demon, haha. "Well my Latin ain't so good and I musta insulted his daddy." Demons are where things start to get a little out of his league, though he has an anti-possession tattoo, so they're where other hunters would start to be helpful. I'm not interested in angels (whether it's a friend or foe role) and I never liked the show's use of leviathan.

In a similar vein, I have interest in playing with characters who know about, and are involved with, the supernatural, but do not throw their whole existence into it the way hunters do. He will meet these people over the course of a hunt. Maybe he'll need to ask some occult scholar about a town's history or a specific kind of beast he hadn't heard of before. Maybe he needs to visit a psychic who has connections with hunters to find a specific thing he's been chasing. Maybe he's suffered some kind of curse and needs to visit a witch to be purified. Maybe your character's a doctor who's developed a reputation among hunters for knowing how to deal with some of the crazy shit that happens to them, who will believe them when they tell them the origin of the wounds. Maybe your character deals in supernatural artifacts and Davan marches in, kills something, and steals an item they've been coveting right out from under their nose. Maybe your character is a supernatural weapons dealer and they have to build something custom for him to kill (or be safe from?) a specific kind of monster. I do prefer scenes where these characters meet in a professional context.

Davan frequently works as a handyman. This is how it goes down: As he travels the country, he'll look for used trucks or vans for sale cheap, cheap, cheap. If he finds one, he'll fix it up, buy a prepaid cellphone and get the vehicle painted for a home repair or remodel business. Then he'll hang around the town/county, putting out ads online and in print, sometimes staying in a motel and sometimes finding an apartment and working until a hunt comes to his attention, then it's all over. There are all kinds of scenes that can happen during these periods of his life. Maybe he starts doing extensive work on your character/character's relative's property, they find out he's staying in a motel or a really shitty building and offer to let him stay. Maybe it's just the context for various casual scenes and he's visibly new in town.

When considering these scenes, keep in mind that, for most, Davan is the kind of guy small town folks trust instinctively. He is "their people"; big and strong and capable. They're not necessarily oblivious to that certain "seen some shit" quality about his eyes, but his behavior discourages most people from questioning it. He's a grown man, after all; he deserves his privacy.

While actually playing music isn't something he frequently turns to, it is a part of his life. He uses a laptop extensively for research, and there's someone he used to be friends with in high school who went on to become part of a moderately popular electronic music outfit. So, he wound up researching it, buying synth software and experimenting, on some of those lonely nights in shitty motels. This is where all the Daughn Gibson stuff bleeds in character; he'll sometimes get on stage at some cafe or bar, put out a tip jar, wire the laptop into the sound and do a set. He does not tour and he does not release albums, because he doesn't want that kind of attention on him. However, he's enough of a romantic - in his fucked up way - that it's a worthwhile outlet for him. I'm definitely interested in scenes that incorporate performance posts or wind up involving Davan sharing his music with someone. This angle is not a strong enough part of him to carry entire plots, but it's an element that makes me very happy when it's included, because I am very passionate about Daughn Gibson's music. I also think it's interesting in the sense that this is another thing he could definitely do well for himself in, you know? He's talented, has an interesting angle and voice; he'd be entirely capable of making a living on it. But, as ever, he doesn't; his life can't be that. He chooses the hunt. His life is tragic.

How's about I be honest with myself, here? I like doing cutesy, Davan Is Such A Good Guy scenes. Helping old ladies bring in groceries. Helping a cute li'l lady get that last box of cereal off the top shelf. Helping push a car out of a ditch. I think it's the contrast, y'know? His life is so dark and depressing, it's nice when he can help out in simple ways that people will actually thank him for, rather than run screaming in the other direction.

I welcome your ideas for scenes, too! Those are just some of the things I'm interested in exploring.

GENDER PREFERENCES

Even though his past is painfully heterosexual, I am just fine playing him with men, both sexually and as romantic potential (though I imagine the romantic bit would be new to him). Despite being more experienced with women, he doesn't need a femboy to "ease into it"; he's comfortable enough with himself that desire is desire and he'll just go for it. A guy doesn't need to be as masculine as him, necessarily, but there should be no confusion.

Genuinely transgender characters - played by players who have at least half a clue of what they're talking about and aren't just fetishizing trans people - may be acceptable, but I'm not sure that Davan's response to finding out about their junk will be a glowing bastion of acceptance. So, things might get rocky about there, but I believe he's capable of learning; so any ignorant questions, insensitive reactions, reluctance to continue, etc., would be entirely in character. He's never had experience with trans people and was brought up in a world of simple, solid facts, so he might take some time. Of course, he'd been brought up not believing in the supernatural, either!

Similarly to the above, non-pornified intersex characters may be welcome.

SUPERNATURAL PREFERENCES

I stick firmly to Supernatural's take on demons and angels (ask me OOC if you're unfamiliar), as I like them just fine as they are and other interpretations are rather cheesy, in my opinion.

The heart-eating breed of werewolves must exist, or else his history is invalidated. I am open to adding other, less feral breeds to the mix, whether it's literally just a breed difference or if it's a matter of being born rather than bitten, etc..

As far as vampires go, I really, really hate daywalkers and vampires who can eat food , so I've tweaked Supernatural's native kind to take those out. Similarly to the werewolves, I may be open to incorporating different breeds of vampires but, in addition to the former limitations, they shouldn't be able to reproduce sexually. They can fuck; they just shoot blanks and have no eggs. I'm much too set in my ways with vampires, sorry.

I think that's about it, really. Unlike the show, you're free to invent a character/monster type to your liking, even if it's just to make a scene colorful. However, I ask that it remain within the realistic aesthetic of the series; inhuman features should be localized and fleeting, or they should resemble (closely) some kind of animal. No talking animals or any of the corny shit like that that's come in later seasons, though.

CANONS?

Bela Talbot in an AU where she doesn't die and carries on being her stellar self? Awesome. Anyone else? Pr'olly not, sorry. I'll keep this updated if my opinion changes.

Canons from other media may be welcome, depending on how well they fit the setting. I do not consider superhero (or similarly "powered") types to fit the setting.

MISCELLANY

-Drives a 2003 Chevy Suburban, dark green
-Has a silver tooth replacing a back right molar
-Chews a lot of gum, a holdover from weaning himself off cigarettes


He's got the astonishingly handsome Daughn Gibson as a character model. I'm gonna spoilerbox some pictures for ya!

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide




I type long but not insurmountable posts, about 300-600 words (likely to get larger with time), and expect the same from my partners. Good dialogue that's distinct from your OOC voice sells me on playing with you a lot!

Contact me however you see fit if you're interested. Reply to this thread, PM me, IM me. I'll be glad to hear from you.

TheKnifeWon

I've edited the main post with a history and some details about what I'm looking for. Most important's the history, really. My Davan's a real boy!

TheKnifeWon

(Retro-edit of a previous update post because I took the idea I mentioned here out, not really attached to it anymore.)

TheKnifeWon

Goddamn check me out, constantly editing posts. Most important is how I've clarified his 'handyman' angle. I think it's interesting that he already has the method and means in place to make a decent living doing honest work, and he will mimic that life for, sometimes, months on end, but it is not his life. It cannot be his life. He always chooses the road, the hunt. It's fucking tragic, frankly; an obscenely noble sacrifice.