APPLICATION

[bottleprophet]

PLAYER INFO

PLAYER NAME » Ryu
PLAYER JOURNAL » swashbuckler
AGE » 25
EMAIL » what.it.seems [at] gmail.com
INSTANT MESSAGING » suspiciouspaper @ AIM, what.it.seems @ gchat
OTHER METHOD OF CONTACT » instrumentality @ plurk
HOW MANY CHARACTERS DO YOU CURRENTLY PLAY? » N/A


CHARACTER INFO

CHARACTER NAME » Billy Harrow (Full name is William, but he goes exclusively by Billy.)
FANDOM » Kraken by China Miéville.
CANON-POINT » Following Simon transporting him into the Darwin Center near the end of the book.

HISTORY » Here, written by me. It focuses solely on Billy's activities during the book, and is therefore not a complete summary of Kraken.

PERSONALITY »

Billy isn’t outgoing, but he’s personable. It’s not enough to make him stand out immediately, but just under the surface, he's pleasantly eccentric in the way that nerds are expected to be. Billy is deeply romantic, and even if he rarely vocalizes his thoughts, he likens the mundane to the phenomenal, and comes up with colorful descriptions for his surroundings. He’s very imaginative, and seems somewhat aesthetically inclined.

He is what most people would qualify as a geek, albeit a socially presentable one. Not only is he passionately informed about marine molluscs, but also more standard geekery, such as the sci-fi classic Star Trek. As a scientist, Billy is interested in how these hobbies influence real world science (and magic, eventually), as he himself cites influence from a childhood television show. It’s mentioned only in passing as an old cartoon which involved singing preserved specimens, and he apparently still sings the theme song periodically while working. Billy is a bit of a dork, and unrepentantly so.

His sense of humor is dry and persistent. He’s not exactly a jokey sort, and usually presents himself as perfectly mild and composed. He’s hardly serious, however, and has an appreciation for the absurd. He dryly corrects Dane on his Star Trek trivia mistakes, and managed to convince all of his coworkers (and the nearby Angel of Memory) that he was a test tube baby simply by keeping up the ruse with a straight face. While usually his humor is good natured and not at anybody’s expense, Billy does become sarcastic and prickly when he’s frustrated.

Billy has always had scraps of confidence, often directed in ways that were less than useful. He compares his apparently un-aging face to Leonardo DiCaprio, and thinks he looks surprisingly cool for a nerd (and is subsequently disappointed when he realizes this isn’t surprising at all). The narrative often stops to allow Billy to congratulate himself for a job well done, for reaching a new milestone in a relationship, or just saying the right thing. His self-worth hasn’t suffered from his slightly antisocial lifestyle, and he in fact seems to have a pretty high opinion of himself and his abilities when he’s on even footing. This grew with his induction into the world of magic, which eventually allows him to accept the Angel’s mistake in picking him as no more or less valid than the selection of any messiah. When his friends are struggling with their personal traumas, Billy has enough faith in his abilities and knowledge to take control of the situation. Still, with the amount of pressure put on him about being a squid prophet or a bottle prophet, Billy often feels inadequate. He never quite lives up to the expectations others had for him, although he might excel in other ways. It’s a combination of frustration and guilt that he can’t be what’s needed, or can’t deliver a proper prophecy. He does what he can though, even going so far as to pretend he’s more informed than he is and playing into peoples’ expectations to give his demands more clout.

He is, however, rather kind and gentle, and any pretense of being manipulative dies there. He feels guilt for hurting others, even if it’s minor in the grand scheme of things. The natural, selfish or naive skew to his niceness eventually fades. When Dane stole a car, Billy hoped they weren’t stealing it from anyone nice, or at least anyone he’d like. But later in the story, Billy develops a more realistic outlook on the world, and passing thoughts like that are dropped in favor of a more intense concern for real innocents, but with an acknowledgement of personal responsibility. Although he spends most of the book worrying about Marge becoming too involved, eventually he realizes that it was all the better for her to make that journey for herself, and it was never his decision. He also actively protects Paul, aware of the threat he poses but still willing to make that risk to save someone who’s a victim of circumstance. Billy also shows a lot of sympathy towards injured or struggling creatures, like Simon’s tribble or the retired Angel.

Partnership and cooperation amongst friends seems very valuable to Billy. He always points out in the narrative when he feels like he’s made some advancement in his relationship with Dane. Things like being able to keep up with him physically, being confident enough to disagree with him when he thinks Dane’s making a bad decision, they all build up Billy's appreciation for being in an equal partnership. Billy doesn’t want to be protected, even if he understands he’s less capable than a lot of the people he’s dealing with. He doesn’t seem to want to surpass Dane either, though, and doesn’t feel threatened by him or other more powerful or more informed allies. He just wants to be useful, and wants to be self-reliant. He notes these changes in himself with some awe, and seems to keep track of how things have grown since he first met Dane.

Billy is detail-oriented and has a mindset that, while very creative and brilliant at making deductions, is slightly meandering. Dane gives Billy focus and provides an intensity to their efforts that Billy can only muster up in dire situations. Billy lives in theory, and even if the answer isn’t necessarily useful, or of the plan isn’t viable, he will still get caught up in wondering. This is especially pronounced if he can get others to participate with him in discussing the theoretical ideas he proposes. Billy’s tendency to question how things work is in stark contrast with the world Dane and Wati live in. For them, it doesn’t matter why the thugs with human fists for heads can see despite having no eyes, because all that’s important is that they’re coming after them. Billy, however, can’t let this stuff go. He can’t take things at face value. This ends up benefitting him, because Billy’s refusal to accept that some things just don’t make sense helps him to solve most of the major problems his team is presented with. Billy eventually asserts himself as the brains of the operation, and his companions learn to listen to him when he hesitates over the dots not connecting like they should.

He’s remarkably bright far beyond his research work in the lab. Not only does he draw connections quickly and accurately, he catches on to how magic works pretty easily. The magic of Billy’s world is all about being persuasive and drawing a reasonably convincing conclusion about how things work, and as it turns out, Billy is good at this. He’s often the first character to realize what the antagonists are plotting, largely due to an aptitude for analyzing their wants and empathizing with them just enough to understand their motivations. He started trying this after being told how Vardy works his cases, and while Billy’s not so extreme in his methods, he is good at understanding others through putting himself in their shoes. Billy’s a sensitive and emotional sort of profiler, and finds his conclusions through understanding how someone is thinking rather than through hard facts. It also makes him fairly good at coercion and interrogation. He interrogates Gris successfully, and convinces the sea to abandon its neutrality, even if he found using reverse psychology on the sea to be more than slightly ridiculous.

Related to this, Billy is very introspective. He spends a lot of time in his own head, analyzing his surroundings and what it all means on a few different levels. While of course he has an intellectual tendency to want to make sense of things, Billy is also sensitive to symbolic meanings and emotional consequences. He can see his situation from the outside, and he can draw some rather dramatic conclusions about it all. In fact, Billy is once accused of being melodramatic, and it’s not an unfair assessment. He does have a fairly strong sense of drama, and paints pictures in his head about himself and the people in his life and how it might seem to someone looking in. His thoughts about Dane’s martyrdom, his own position as a prophet and Wati’s struggling strike are all very heartfelt and affectionate, even adoring, but also a little overwrought. Not only that, but Billy is pretty vocal when he’s annoyed or unhappy, often reverting to sarcasm or exaggeration. Although he’s not much of a complainer, he’s not good at the stiff upper lip routine. He has a very difficult time recovering from the death of his friend Leon, periodically to the frustration of some of his companions.

Although Billy is sensitive, it doesn’t mean that he’s flawless in his interpersonal dealings. Although he tries, he doesn’t usually know how to comfort people. While Dane is distraught, he stays with him, but doesn’t seem to be able to summon up any really meaningful words to help him. When Billy himself is upset, he appears to withdraw, sometimes to the point of shutting down. When Dane is kidnapped, Billy doesn’t move and the narrative suddenly becomes devoid of his typical introspection. He in fact doesn’t move until Wati shows up and convinces him they have to leave. When Dane dies later, he’s more expressive, but still withdraws, and doesn’t express anger or sadness until he’s alone.

Billy has become more muted in the past weeks as a direct result of being hardened by his experiences. He was never a loud and gregarious man to begin with, but recent events have forced him to be more serious and more realistic. His previous naive outlook has dried up, and he knows he has to be able to rely on himself for survival, especially in the wake of Dane’s death. He’s not to the point of cynicism yet, but there’s a new moroseness to him, and a determined willingness to do what he has to if he wants to succeed.

ABILITIES/WEAKNESSES »

Billy is the chosen Christ of an Angel of Memory for the Darwin Center, as well as assumed to be a prophet of the god Kraken. As such, he has a variety of small but notable abilities.

◊ Dreams: Billy has very vivid and highly symbolic dreams. They were first triggered by drinking squid ink, but continued long past its use. They’re not truly prophetic, but are heavily influenced by what’s going on outside of his perception. Their source is, of course, the Angel of Memory attempting to communicate with him.

◊ Mnemophylax: The Angel of Memory of the Darwin Center actively protects Billy and will accompany him to Sweven. The Angel itself is usually lingering nearby and manifests itself physically when Billy's in danger. The Angel of Memory seems to create a “body” from a combination of formaldehyde bottles and pieces of skeletons or other preserved dead creatures, and it lashes out violently when Billy is seriously threatened. After tearing apart the target, it seems to “eat” them and bits of its victims’ flesh can be seen floating in the bottles that make up its torso. When the Angel is weak, the bottles it’s made of are small, and the bones are from rodents. In this form, its obviously unable to give Billy any aid. The Angel protects Billy, and Billy alone. For instance, when it manifests to attack his pursuers, it stops as soon as Billy is safe and allows Dane to be kidnapped. Although it’s never seen how it does this, the Angel also seems to have the power to preserve its victims in glass bottles like specimens. It can't be killed, but can be defeated by destroying its vessels and forcing it to reform, which takes hours at the minimum.

However, most of the time the Angel just follows Billy around as an unseen presence. Even if the Angel doesn’t manifest itself physically, it makes itself known to Billy through glass related noises only he can hear. Glass grinding against glass, a shattering test tube, glass clinking, something rolling across the floor, etc. Billy uses these noises as a sort of out-of-tune spider sense. When things are particularly bad, they give Billy a headache and he can barely hear over the noise. By the point at which I'm taking him, Billy can effortlessly interpret the Angel's basic intentions in its "words".

◊ Glass: When Billy is anxious or stressed, glass tends to behave oddly around him. It might vibrate, appear to warp or even shatter under extreme circumstances. When Billy looks through glass, he has an increased chance to notice the supernatural. Since he wears glasses, he has almost constant access to this ability. It’s not flawless, but when things are off, Billy can usually spot them. His eyes are just drawn to what or who’s out of place. Whether or not he can interpret this is another matter. (Which is to say he usually can’t, and won't know why an individual stands out to him.) Furthermore, his glasses usually remain clean and unscratched, but he may notice they're dirty as a symbol of something being off in his surroundings.

Billy is also amazingly talented at preserving specimens in glass. His specimens almost look like they’re still alive, and he can position them expertly. Prior to the Angel taking an interest in him, Billy was pretty awful at his job, which does make this skill a magical power, albeit a very small one.

◊ Time Control: When Billy focuses, he can slow down time for several moments, usually just enough to escape someone’s grasp or dodge a deadly blow. When he becomes more confident and can call on it more reliably, he often uses it to slow down his enemies so he can take a shot at them. He also once uses it to slow down a dangerous fall. He can also seem to summon up a sort of barrier that can block attacks. All of these powers are often associated with nearby glass shattering, but not always.

◊ Resistance to Compulsion: Although it’s not clear where it came from, Billy is highly resistant to magical compulsions. Collingswood twice attempts to magically command him to not speak about certain subjects, and Billy is able to resist this both times with minimal effort, much to her surprise. She comments on it being very impressive.

◊ Symbolism: Billy’s last ability is more of a comment on the world he comes from at large. Magical ability and intensity is determined by the amount of symbolic worth an idea has. It’s a matter of working with what is already available, and changing the world accordingly. Doing this is called knacking, and sometimes people with notable ability are called knacksmiths. Technically speaking, Billy’s time and glass powers are his knack, but the whole system is more complicated than the handful of people that have thematic, natural powers. Billy is completely untrained, but has a vague idea of how the idea of symbolic power works. He is therefore, theoretically, able to make something mundane into something magical simply by saying it is and assigning it symbolic worth. Said items never do anything particularly magical, but can be made so by definition. In one of the final confrontations, he undermines Grisamentum by redefining the giant squid as a specimen instead of a god.

◊ Physical Prowess (or lack thereof): Billy has some on-the-fly urban survival training from his companion, Dane, but he's a mediocre shot at best and is still a skinny nerd at the end of the day. The most that can be said for his fighting abilities is that Billy isn't afraid, and has taken to his new life admirably. But without the Angel or Dane protecting him, Billy is an extremely vulnerable normal.

DREAM POWER »

In his sleep, Billy's skin is able to change color and patterns like a cuttlefish. In real life, watching him sleep will reveal a sort of light show in his freckles, which move all across his body in shifting, vivid, patterns. These are involuntary, and react to his dreaming thoughts. In a dreamscape, however, Billy can try to control them, and change from head to toe to whatever color or pattern he wants, essentially allowing him to affect a chameleon disguise.

CHARACTER SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE » [A shaky voice of a young man begins speaking. He has a clear London accent.]

I don't know what to say.

I ended up here by accident, but we all did, they said, so it doesn't do any good that I can trace it back to the moment it happened. I was traveling in a pretty unique way, though, and I can't help but wonder if it played a part in this. I was also told going back to London is complicated, because my passport didn't get abducted with me.

I'll see if there's... uh, anyone I can get to break into my flat and mail it here. Don't think they're going to be worried enough now to ask for me back for questioning.

LOG SAMPLE »
Billy still felt like he was intruding on the imagined residents when he walked into certain rooms. The bathroom or the bedroom, mostly. Personal spaces that were only open to the closest friends. He wanted the place to feel dead and empty, to find the too-clean atmosphere of a hotel. That way he wouldn’t need to reflexively apologize to someone who didn’t exist when he tucked himself into their bed, or wonder how hygienic the contents of their cabinets were, for that matter.

Dane entered as Billy was in mid-inspection of a container of cheap hair product. The bathroom had seemed spacious moments ago, but Dane filled it up. The picture the mirror showed Billy was now mostly composed of Dane’s girth. Next to him, Billy appeared small, because he was, and ridiculous, because the clothes he had borrowed were.

“Need to do something with your hair.” Dane was looking hard at Billy’s reflection.

Billy ran a hand through his hair, separating waves and making the shape even less flattering. Sleep had left it shabby, but with enough similarities to the long-gone mild mannered scientist that he could see Dane’s point. Billy felt different, but the man staring back at him was unchanged. He was suddenly tempted to try a flex, to see if the new strength he felt was also something he could see, but Dane was standing right there and Billy’s embarrassment was tangible.

“Not much that can be done, is there?” he said and shrugged. He relied upon the optimistic thought that it would be ridiculously nitpicky to have included bacteria or mold in their false home, and squirted some of the gel onto his hand. Dane was still watching him as Billy pushed the gummy, stale stuff into his hair.

“It’s too recognizable. Maybe we can flatten it.” He wasn’t satisfied with Billy’s progress so far, apparently.

“You’re not any better.” Billy still applied more gel, which only really succeeded in making his hair look unpleasantly wet. His curls became tendrils and coils. “At least I have new clothes.”

“Take off your glasses.” Dane’s hand was open to receive them, and although Billy pulled them off with two sticky fingers, he didn’t hand the glasses over. He felt more blind without them than he remembered, his mind almost as blurry as his sight. Dane made some sort of a face, but a combination of poor vision and distractedness made it hard to evaluate the reaction.

“Maybe you could just leave them off,” said the mass of unrecognizable features.

Billy laughed over the consideration in Dane’s voice, and quickly replaced the glasses on his face. He had missed them even in their briefest of separations, but now the world was crisp and clear again, and Dane was more than just a looming dark shape. “Yeah, and see how useful I’ll be next time we get chased down.” Billy met Dane’s eyes, and tilted his head down to peer over the rim of his glasses, changing the image from perfect to incomprehensible. He noticed where Dane shifted and displaced behind the lenses. “Can’t see anything without them.”

ANYTHING ELSE? » Billy is a Fourth Wall Risk for a handful of canons that usually don't have to deal with it. His book makes a lot of pop culture references, and beyond common knowledge pop icons, the following canons are listed: Dr. Who, Supernatural, Buffy, Angel, American Gothic, Star Trek (shown to be a particularly knowledgable fan of ToS), Star Cops, Lexx, Farscape, Star Wars. He's from the end of 2007, and would be familiar with anything put out before that date.

I'll set up a permissions post where people can discuss with me how they'd like to handle it, get clarification about what Billy would know, or if they'd like to avoid it altogether.