![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
RECOLLE APPLICATION
PLAYER
YOUR NAME: Crystal
18+?: Yep!
CONTACT: plurk @ vampirize
CHARACTERS IN GAME: None!
RESERVATION LINK: here!
YOUR NAME: Crystal
18+?: Yep!
CONTACT: plurk @ vampirize
CHARACTERS IN GAME: None!
RESERVATION LINK: here!
CHARACTER: CANON SECTION
NAME: Howard Phillips Lovecraft
AGE: 28, though it comes with a question mark and it's very highly suggested he's Old as Dirt
CANON: Bungou Stray Dogs
right over here! and hereNAME: Howard Phillips Lovecraft
AGE: 28, though it comes with a question mark and it's very highly suggested he's Old as Dirt
CANON: Bungou Stray Dogs
CANON HISTORY:
In the world of Bungou Stray Dogs, a variety of individuals are named after famous authors - however, these people are only related to said authors by their names and superhuman abilities, which are inspired directly by their works. (Sometimes, their lives and personalities also relate to the authors they are named after (for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald being married to a woman named Zelda), but mostly, they're as far from their inspirations as possible.) There is no explanation as to how and why they received their individual powers, so when it comes to the question of "why do the heck do they have superpowers" all I can say is "who the heck even knows".
Now, the story with Lovecraft technically starts with a very wealthy and influential American guy by the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald took on the role of heading a powerful, secretive group of American ability-users like himself, which was called The Guild. For a time, the Guild worked behind the shadows, until a great tragedy happened to Fitzgerald - his young daughter died. In his grief, he collected the most powerful ability-users in the Guild to help him find a miraculous book that could grant all wishes. He hoped that through his search, he would be able to use the book to resurrect his child, returning his family to normal.
Lovecraft was one of the many ability-users Fitzgerald recruited to The Guild, which doesn't seem very strange at all unless you know a certain strange truth.
You see, H.P. Lovecraft isn't a human being with superpowers, like the rest of The Guild. He's actually a monstrous creature in the form of a human being, a being whose true form looks like somebody went Photoshop crazy on Cthulhu.
So, yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald somehow, through circumstances that we may never know, found and contracted an incredibly powerful inhuman creature to work for him and do his bidding. We don't know the nature of the contract, and we don't know if Fitzgerald promised Lovecraft anything in return for his services (besides being allowed to return "home" after he's done, which is insinuated to be somewhere in the ocean because Cthulhu reference and all), but either way, Lovecraft seems to have worked for Fitzgerald for some time to fulfill his contract.
In the events of the story, Fitzgerald and the Guild arrive to Japan, seemingly interested in taking over the territory of the main local ability user group, the Armed Detective Agency. Before then, Fitzgerald had placed an enormous bounty on the head of a young man named Atsushi, who had the ability to change into a large, invincible tiger. This plan was foiled by the Agency, and so, Fitzgerald moved onto his next plan: trying to buy out the Director of the Agency with loads of money. This fails spectacularly. So, Fitzgerald pretty much shrugs and decides to take what he wants by sheer force.
The Port Mafia, another Japan-based ability group who has been fighting with the Agency for a long time, suddenly do "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" ploy, sending the Guild information of the location where two non-ability users of the Agency can be found. Lovecraft and a fellow Guild member by the name of John Steinbeck are sent by Fitzgerald to take these members hostage. As it turns out, the whole thing was a trap - the Port Mafia tells the Agency what the heck is going on, and the Agency sends two agents, Doppo Kunikida and Junichiro Tanizaki, to save the hides of these would-be hostages. Just as it looks like Lovecraft and Steinbeck have succeeded in their plan using Steinbeck's ability, Grapes of Wrath, the two agents show up to save the day. Kunikida shoots Lovecraft in the back, seemingly taking him down, and then tackles Steinbeck to the ground.
It all seems like a pretty easy victory for the Agency, but SURPRISE SURPRISE Lovecraft wasn't taken down at all. He had just fallen asleep. Really. He proceeds to use his really terrifying ability to slam the two agents into the side of a cliff, and lo and behold, the Guild has gained the upper hand!
Except Tanizaki has the ability to make illusions, and when a truck starts to drive past on the road, he makes it seem that the road looks normal, all while actually directing the truck driver towards Steinbeck and Lovecraft. The truck slams into the both of them, and then Lovecraft becomes roadkill.
(He gets better.)
The Port Mafia, desperate to get an upper hand in this three-way ability war, release a secret weapon: a young child by the name of Q. Q runs into Lovecraft, who has proceeded to do some sight-seeing on his own, and attempts to use his ability on him - the terrifying ability of inducing a person to hallucinate their worst fears, becoming aggressive and zombie-like in the process. However, what Q didn't realize was that using his ability on Lovecraft was biting off more than he can chew. For when Q's ability activates, Lovecraft...well. He changes into something monstrous.
Q, fainting from the absolute shock of seeing Lovecraft's changed form, is captured by the Guild. Fitzgerald knows that his group is losing ground in the war and decides to enact an emergency plan. Steinbeck combines his ability forcefully with Q's ability, connecting it with the trees throughout Yokohama. Because of thia, thousands of people in the city suddenly turn mindless and angry, and the Armed Detective Agency and Port Mafia realize who is behind it. Desperate to stop this crisis, they send an ability nullifier named Osamu Dazai from the ADA and a gravity manipulator named Chuuya Nakahara to deal with Lovecraft and Steinbeck, who are guarding Q.
Chuuya tosses a giant boulder at Lovecraft, thinking that will take him out instantly. It doesn't. Just when Chuuya and Dazai defeat Steinbeck and are ready to leave with Q in tow, Lovecraft suddenly reappears.
He...doesn't look right.
Dazai goes to nullify Lovecraft, but realizes in shock that his ability doesn't work: that is, Lovecraft's ability isn't an ability at all.
That is when things go from bizarre to NIGHTMAREVILLE. Lovecraft, mumbling about how he wants to go home and how he has to finish his end of Fitzgerald's contract, transforms into a gigantic eldritch creature. Dazai and Chuuya agree to activate an incredibly dangerous ability- Chuuya can generate black holes, but at the expense of his own sanity and health. Together, he and Dazai manage to blow Lovecraft up into smithereens just before Chuuya loses himself.
And that's the end of Lovecraft....right?
Nope.
He just reforms himself like nothing happened. Complaining about how it's been a terrible day, he goes and jumps into the ocean while telling the other Guild members that he's going to go "sleep".
That's the story of Lovecraft in Bungou Stray Dogs. Will he return someday? Will he sleep forever in the depths of the sea? Only time will tell...
CANON PERSONALITY:
Thanks to the author and stories his character is inspired by, Lovecraft seems to be a combination of the "cosmic indifference" of the Elder Gods and the bizarre and bleak personality of the author himself. He mostly comes off as a nonchalant, yet incredibly melancholy man wallowing in constant misery. He complains about his lack of sleep, his hunger, and the fact that he wants to go home fairly frequently, and seems to worry over trivial things like suddenly feeling that somebody's watching him. "Happiness" doesn't even seem to be a part of his vocabulary - he never smiles, instead going around with an expression that just seems to say "I'm so exhausted by everything around me that I could care less about what happens, honestly". He also seems to have a bleak perspective on most things, naturally assuming that things may go wrong for him before they happen (as when he naturally assumes he and Steinbeck are walking into a trap long before they reach the place where they're going, for example).
Lovecraft is, notably, a creature of sloth. He moves slowly and reacts rather poorly to quick changes in the things happening around him. Even during battle, he doesn't seem to act with any sort of hurry or urgency - for example, when shot in the back by an Agency member, he quite literally falls asleep then and there. He feels very little fear about the fact he might get hurt (which makes sense, considering he literally can't), though rarely, he notes that he feels "scared" by a sudden change in the events around him. He's also incredibly passive. He'll follow the orders and cues of the people around him when he has no idea what to do on his own, and doesn't seem to want to make decisions without some input or confirmation from others. Honestly, he's just comfortable letting other people take the reins - if you point him where he needs to go, he'll go there without questioning it. Of course, he has to trust another enough to follow their orders in the first place, but sometimes he just won't know what to do, and will react with confusion and hesitation when prompted to do something.
He is not actively malicious, which may come as a surprise, but the key word here is "actively". He's not the type to murder people left and right, but at the same time, if he's told to by a person he is following the orders of, he will kill someone without hesitation. "Right" and "wrong" don't mean anything to him - taking another's life is just as normal a task as retrieving a parcel. After all, Lovecraft is an inhuman being who doesn't see people's lives as anything significant. If he harms someone, he harms someone. That's fine. He's never going to feel any kind of guilt or regret over it. He doesn't cherish humanity or regard it with disgust - he just sees it as...something that exists. He's incredibly indifferent to it, the same way a man would be indifferent to the individual lives of ants running around an anthill. Killing a few ants doesn't mean anything, in the long run.
That being said, it's notable that, on his own, without the input of others above him, Lovecraft doesn't seem to want to be a walking weapon - honestly, he seems to want people to either treat him normally or, better yet, leave him alone. He gets paranoid and anxious in the presence of large groups of people, saying that "the attention makes him itch", and seems to be comfortable only when he's with one person, or he has worked alongside and gotten to know a few people at a time. He's no leader, and does not want to deal with crowds of people if he can help it. In this way, he's almost like a hermit wandering out into a noisy loud city, feeling isolated and nervous in the presence of so many things and people. If he's left alone and unbothered, he'll be happy.
It is of note that very, VERY rarely, if pushed too far, he can snap and lash out at others, but this only happens in incredibly dire circumstances. He calms down very quickly, though, luckily for others who might be facing off against him. The majority of the time, he'll react with confusion or morose indifference towards people trying to rile him up, but the potential for him to suddenly become destructive is there.
As far as his understanding of human culture goes, Lovecraft is, surprisingly, not at all foreign to it. He's used to trains and cars and walking around, remarking on the weather and the state of buildings in a way that indicates that playing human is something he's done before. However, this doesn't mean his understanding is perfect - for example, when he meets a young character, he attempts to entertain him by remembering a balloon man making a dog out of a balloon for children...and then proceeds to make a "balloon" of his own out of his own tentacles. It doesn't go over that well. He also has a fair amount of strange quirks, like spending time to count the number of (natural) wood grains on the sides of buildings. Why does he do it? Who knows! He enjoys it in his own way, somehow. He's a weirdo eldritch monstrosity trying to human, he's doing his best.
Overall, Lovecraft is a person who comes off as incredibly indifferent to the world, more focused on his own petty sorrows and pessimistic attitude than anything else. For something that probably enjoyed a long sleep before being dragged out into the human world, it's only natural for him to go around like a miserable, exhausted man who doesn't want to do much at all.
honestly, he's pretty much this
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
Hooooo boy. WELL, Lovecraft is probably one of the most OP characters in the entirety of Bungou Stray Dogs, because while everyone else is a regular ability user, Lovecraft is...not.
In the world of Bungou Stray Dogs, a variety of individuals are named after famous authors - however, these people are only related to said authors by their names and superhuman abilities, which are inspired directly by their works. (Sometimes, their lives and personalities also relate to the authors they are named after (for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald being married to a woman named Zelda), but mostly, they're as far from their inspirations as possible.) There is no explanation as to how and why they received their individual powers, so when it comes to the question of "why do the heck do they have superpowers" all I can say is "who the heck even knows".
Now, the story with Lovecraft technically starts with a very wealthy and influential American guy by the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald took on the role of heading a powerful, secretive group of American ability-users like himself, which was called The Guild. For a time, the Guild worked behind the shadows, until a great tragedy happened to Fitzgerald - his young daughter died. In his grief, he collected the most powerful ability-users in the Guild to help him find a miraculous book that could grant all wishes. He hoped that through his search, he would be able to use the book to resurrect his child, returning his family to normal.
Lovecraft was one of the many ability-users Fitzgerald recruited to The Guild, which doesn't seem very strange at all unless you know a certain strange truth.
You see, H.P. Lovecraft isn't a human being with superpowers, like the rest of The Guild. He's actually a monstrous creature in the form of a human being, a being whose true form looks like somebody went Photoshop crazy on Cthulhu.
So, yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald somehow, through circumstances that we may never know, found and contracted an incredibly powerful inhuman creature to work for him and do his bidding. We don't know the nature of the contract, and we don't know if Fitzgerald promised Lovecraft anything in return for his services (besides being allowed to return "home" after he's done, which is insinuated to be somewhere in the ocean because Cthulhu reference and all), but either way, Lovecraft seems to have worked for Fitzgerald for some time to fulfill his contract.
In the events of the story, Fitzgerald and the Guild arrive to Japan, seemingly interested in taking over the territory of the main local ability user group, the Armed Detective Agency. Before then, Fitzgerald had placed an enormous bounty on the head of a young man named Atsushi, who had the ability to change into a large, invincible tiger. This plan was foiled by the Agency, and so, Fitzgerald moved onto his next plan: trying to buy out the Director of the Agency with loads of money. This fails spectacularly. So, Fitzgerald pretty much shrugs and decides to take what he wants by sheer force.
The Port Mafia, another Japan-based ability group who has been fighting with the Agency for a long time, suddenly do "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" ploy, sending the Guild information of the location where two non-ability users of the Agency can be found. Lovecraft and a fellow Guild member by the name of John Steinbeck are sent by Fitzgerald to take these members hostage. As it turns out, the whole thing was a trap - the Port Mafia tells the Agency what the heck is going on, and the Agency sends two agents, Doppo Kunikida and Junichiro Tanizaki, to save the hides of these would-be hostages. Just as it looks like Lovecraft and Steinbeck have succeeded in their plan using Steinbeck's ability, Grapes of Wrath, the two agents show up to save the day. Kunikida shoots Lovecraft in the back, seemingly taking him down, and then tackles Steinbeck to the ground.
It all seems like a pretty easy victory for the Agency, but SURPRISE SURPRISE Lovecraft wasn't taken down at all. He had just fallen asleep. Really. He proceeds to use his really terrifying ability to slam the two agents into the side of a cliff, and lo and behold, the Guild has gained the upper hand!
Except Tanizaki has the ability to make illusions, and when a truck starts to drive past on the road, he makes it seem that the road looks normal, all while actually directing the truck driver towards Steinbeck and Lovecraft. The truck slams into the both of them, and then Lovecraft becomes roadkill.
(He gets better.)
The Port Mafia, desperate to get an upper hand in this three-way ability war, release a secret weapon: a young child by the name of Q. Q runs into Lovecraft, who has proceeded to do some sight-seeing on his own, and attempts to use his ability on him - the terrifying ability of inducing a person to hallucinate their worst fears, becoming aggressive and zombie-like in the process. However, what Q didn't realize was that using his ability on Lovecraft was biting off more than he can chew. For when Q's ability activates, Lovecraft...well. He changes into something monstrous.
Q, fainting from the absolute shock of seeing Lovecraft's changed form, is captured by the Guild. Fitzgerald knows that his group is losing ground in the war and decides to enact an emergency plan. Steinbeck combines his ability forcefully with Q's ability, connecting it with the trees throughout Yokohama. Because of thia, thousands of people in the city suddenly turn mindless and angry, and the Armed Detective Agency and Port Mafia realize who is behind it. Desperate to stop this crisis, they send an ability nullifier named Osamu Dazai from the ADA and a gravity manipulator named Chuuya Nakahara to deal with Lovecraft and Steinbeck, who are guarding Q.
Chuuya tosses a giant boulder at Lovecraft, thinking that will take him out instantly. It doesn't. Just when Chuuya and Dazai defeat Steinbeck and are ready to leave with Q in tow, Lovecraft suddenly reappears.
He...doesn't look right.
Dazai goes to nullify Lovecraft, but realizes in shock that his ability doesn't work: that is, Lovecraft's ability isn't an ability at all.
That is when things go from bizarre to NIGHTMAREVILLE. Lovecraft, mumbling about how he wants to go home and how he has to finish his end of Fitzgerald's contract, transforms into a gigantic eldritch creature. Dazai and Chuuya agree to activate an incredibly dangerous ability- Chuuya can generate black holes, but at the expense of his own sanity and health. Together, he and Dazai manage to blow Lovecraft up into smithereens just before Chuuya loses himself.
And that's the end of Lovecraft....right?
Nope.
He just reforms himself like nothing happened. Complaining about how it's been a terrible day, he goes and jumps into the ocean while telling the other Guild members that he's going to go "sleep".
That's the story of Lovecraft in Bungou Stray Dogs. Will he return someday? Will he sleep forever in the depths of the sea? Only time will tell...
CANON PERSONALITY:
Thanks to the author and stories his character is inspired by, Lovecraft seems to be a combination of the "cosmic indifference" of the Elder Gods and the bizarre and bleak personality of the author himself. He mostly comes off as a nonchalant, yet incredibly melancholy man wallowing in constant misery. He complains about his lack of sleep, his hunger, and the fact that he wants to go home fairly frequently, and seems to worry over trivial things like suddenly feeling that somebody's watching him. "Happiness" doesn't even seem to be a part of his vocabulary - he never smiles, instead going around with an expression that just seems to say "I'm so exhausted by everything around me that I could care less about what happens, honestly". He also seems to have a bleak perspective on most things, naturally assuming that things may go wrong for him before they happen (as when he naturally assumes he and Steinbeck are walking into a trap long before they reach the place where they're going, for example).
Lovecraft is, notably, a creature of sloth. He moves slowly and reacts rather poorly to quick changes in the things happening around him. Even during battle, he doesn't seem to act with any sort of hurry or urgency - for example, when shot in the back by an Agency member, he quite literally falls asleep then and there. He feels very little fear about the fact he might get hurt (which makes sense, considering he literally can't), though rarely, he notes that he feels "scared" by a sudden change in the events around him. He's also incredibly passive. He'll follow the orders and cues of the people around him when he has no idea what to do on his own, and doesn't seem to want to make decisions without some input or confirmation from others. Honestly, he's just comfortable letting other people take the reins - if you point him where he needs to go, he'll go there without questioning it. Of course, he has to trust another enough to follow their orders in the first place, but sometimes he just won't know what to do, and will react with confusion and hesitation when prompted to do something.
He is not actively malicious, which may come as a surprise, but the key word here is "actively". He's not the type to murder people left and right, but at the same time, if he's told to by a person he is following the orders of, he will kill someone without hesitation. "Right" and "wrong" don't mean anything to him - taking another's life is just as normal a task as retrieving a parcel. After all, Lovecraft is an inhuman being who doesn't see people's lives as anything significant. If he harms someone, he harms someone. That's fine. He's never going to feel any kind of guilt or regret over it. He doesn't cherish humanity or regard it with disgust - he just sees it as...something that exists. He's incredibly indifferent to it, the same way a man would be indifferent to the individual lives of ants running around an anthill. Killing a few ants doesn't mean anything, in the long run.
That being said, it's notable that, on his own, without the input of others above him, Lovecraft doesn't seem to want to be a walking weapon - honestly, he seems to want people to either treat him normally or, better yet, leave him alone. He gets paranoid and anxious in the presence of large groups of people, saying that "the attention makes him itch", and seems to be comfortable only when he's with one person, or he has worked alongside and gotten to know a few people at a time. He's no leader, and does not want to deal with crowds of people if he can help it. In this way, he's almost like a hermit wandering out into a noisy loud city, feeling isolated and nervous in the presence of so many things and people. If he's left alone and unbothered, he'll be happy.
It is of note that very, VERY rarely, if pushed too far, he can snap and lash out at others, but this only happens in incredibly dire circumstances. He calms down very quickly, though, luckily for others who might be facing off against him. The majority of the time, he'll react with confusion or morose indifference towards people trying to rile him up, but the potential for him to suddenly become destructive is there.
As far as his understanding of human culture goes, Lovecraft is, surprisingly, not at all foreign to it. He's used to trains and cars and walking around, remarking on the weather and the state of buildings in a way that indicates that playing human is something he's done before. However, this doesn't mean his understanding is perfect - for example, when he meets a young character, he attempts to entertain him by remembering a balloon man making a dog out of a balloon for children...and then proceeds to make a "balloon" of his own out of his own tentacles. It doesn't go over that well. He also has a fair amount of strange quirks, like spending time to count the number of (natural) wood grains on the sides of buildings. Why does he do it? Who knows! He enjoys it in his own way, somehow. He's a weirdo eldritch monstrosity trying to human, he's doing his best.
Overall, Lovecraft is a person who comes off as incredibly indifferent to the world, more focused on his own petty sorrows and pessimistic attitude than anything else. For something that probably enjoyed a long sleep before being dragged out into the human world, it's only natural for him to go around like a miserable, exhausted man who doesn't want to do much at all.
honestly, he's pretty much this
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
Hooooo boy. WELL, Lovecraft is probably one of the most OP characters in the entirety of Bungou Stray Dogs, because while everyone else is a regular ability user, Lovecraft is...not.
- Functionally immortal and regenerates from anything - multiple times throughout the story, Lovecraft is the target of many attacks, including gunshots, barbed wire, and an entire truck. None of them even leave a scratch. In his final battle, Lovecraft has a bomb blow up inside him and is torn to pieces by a generated black hole. He must get hurt from something as drastic as that, right? Wrong. It's eventually shown that the pieces of his body join back up together to reform himself. The man is probably impossible to destroy by any means, which makes sense considering he's not even human.
- Increased senses - at several points, Lovecraft seems to show an exceptional capability for hearing and detecting things outside the range of human senses. He tells Steinbeck that he "can't hear their breathing" when their enemies get away, and notes that somebody is watching them when they're passing by a house. There does seem to be a limit to this, but it seems that Lovecraft picks up on a lot more than a regular person...the problem is that he barely acts on what he does notice.
- The inability to feel pain - this man doesn't even flinch when being shot multiple times in the chest - he never seems to even acknowledge being hit, and can easily shrug off most wounds that people would scream over.
- The Great Old Ones - the name of his "ability", which allows him to convert parts of his body into a bunch of powerful, agile tentacles. This, of course, is barely even the tip of the iceberg with Lovecraft, as pretty much his ENTIRE BODY is basically a bunch of tentacles stuffed into a human skin suit.
- What are bones? we just don't know - tied in with the whole "he is a bunch of tentacles/tentacle monster" thing, Lovecraft has an abnormal level of flexibility and doesn't seem to have the same skeletal structure as a regular human being - for example, snapping his neck back into place easily after he's been run over by a truck.
- Ability to breathe underwater - sort of self explanatory, as he is a creature that has been confirmed to live at the bottom of the ocean, and he jumps into the ocean at the end of Guild Arc so that he can sleep.
- True(?) Form - yeah, so, while it's still a BIG FAT IF, that big Cthulhu-like thing that Lovecraft turns into? It's possibly what he actually looks like. Or, it's just another form he can take while his true TRUE form is...probably insanity-inducing, who even knows. Anyways, he can turn into a giant tentacle monster the size of a small apartment building that is apparently somewhat weak to damage on the inside. It's a thing.
CHARACTER: AU SECTION
AU NAME: Howard Phillips Carter
AU AGE: 28 (for real this time)
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES: His purple eyes have been changed to a dull green. And he's not quite as stretchy - while he probably has a bit more flexibility than others, he's not going to be going around being a contortionist or anything. Otherwise, his general appearance will stay the same! (No tentacles. Not yet.)
AU HISTORY:
AU PERSONALITY:
AU NAME: Howard Phillips Carter
AU AGE: 28 (for real this time)
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES: His purple eyes have been changed to a dull green. And he's not quite as stretchy - while he probably has a bit more flexibility than others, he's not going to be going around being a contortionist or anything. Otherwise, his general appearance will stay the same! (No tentacles. Not yet.)
AU HISTORY:
- Howard Phillips Carter was the only child born to a couple living in an old mansion in Boston. He was a pale and sickly child, prone to illness and weakness, and his parents attempted to do all they could for his health. They took him to the beach one day, thinking the sea air would help him out, but when they got caught in an argument, they didn't notice Howard disappearing under the waves. They saved him in time, but Howard, from that point on, had an abnormal level of obsession/fear/awe of the ocean after his near-death experience.
- His mother suffered from a sudden decline in health later when he was a young teenager, and she passed away with most of her mind already gone. Not long after, Howard's father up and left without any warning or notice, and nobody ever knew what happened to him after that. Howard was closer with his mother more than his father, and while he still wonders about his fate to this day, he has never actively searched for him.
- He moved to Massachusetts to stay with distant relatives and went to finish high school and eventually went to a small college. During that time, he found a personal obsession with history relating to the sea, and with the support of his English professor he started to write about the history of various shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean.
- While his choice of writing subjects was strange, to say the least, he did draw the attention of some historians and received opportunities to publish in some more prestigious history research magazines. During this time, he starts writing short sea-related ghost stories for fun and publishes them in literary magazines to get some extra money.
- He moved to Recolle a couple of years ago when he got an offer to give a lecture at the university there. Howard then accidentally became a teacher's assistant when a lazy professor decided to hire him on a whim without having to go through an endless interview process, and he's stayed in Recolle ever since. He's slowly aiming towards getting a PhD at some point and has gained some notoriety for his fictional short stories, much to his chagrin.
- He lives by himself in low-income housing, has grown out his hair because he's too lazy to cut it, and saves money by barely eating anything at all besides stuff in cans and sweets. He mostly buys clothing from thrift stores and barely cares if it's in bad shape. He's still not healthy at all and probably has made people question how in the world he has survived this long.
- He has suffered from a bad case of social anxiety all his life (he really didn't get much interaction with peers until after what happened to his parents, and even then he was too afraid to learn how to socialize), and while he recognizes his problem he has stayed away from therapists/medical solutions mostly because...well, he's too nervous to just unload his personal issues onto someone he barely knows. Also he suffers from extreme narcolepsy, but has been too lazy to even see the doctor about it, he just assumes that someone will help him out if he falls asleep in an unfortunate place.
AU PERSONALITY:
- Lovecraft will now know how to....GASP. BE HUMAN. That is, he won't do things like count wood grains out loud in public or think that a kid really needs to see a bunch of thrashing tentacles for entertainment. That being said, he does still come off as pretty weird, but it's more of a social awkwardness and lack of social knowledge rather than well, being an eldritch monster. Metaphors and sayings won't go over his head, he'll understand how to pay rent and taxes and will know what debt means, will comprehend how to have a 9-5 job like an average person...and so on and so forth. He's more of an anxious shut-in with strange dark interests in this incarnation than a being who literally has spent years sleeping in the ocean.
- Speaking of the ocean, he actually will stay away from it. He has this not-so-healthy fear and awe of it that stems from his incident of drowning when he was a kid. He has no fear of drowning or water, but just the general idea of the ocean itself - in fact, if he goes on a boat, he'll get seasick a little more quickly than a regular person because his general anxiety and excitement about being out on the ocean or other large bodies of water will really affect him.
- He actually has an inking of a morality now! Before, Lovecraft could care less about human beings and what happened to them. Now, he actually has the capability to care and worry about the health and status of others he likes, because now being human himself, he knows that mortality is a Thing that happens to others and can happen to him too. Not to say that he's a goody-two-shoes to anyone he meets, but he will generally be somewhat polite and fairly nice to people he knows and will try to help out where he can. (It won't stop him from being rude and stubborn towards others, though.) He is a bit indifferent towards the suffering or death of people he doesn't know, though, which is an issue but he probably won't budge on that anytime soon.
- Adding to the above, Lovecraft can now care for more than one person at a time. Will wonders never cease. (His EXPRESSION of said care will still be stunted/horribly repressed, but overall he does like being liked and wants the people he likes to be happy.) In canon, he only had Steinbeck as a friend, but as a human being he's more open to allowing a few more people in his internal circle - it's not like he has to worry about sharing the secret that he's a big monster to them. Not yet, anyways.
- Howard is fairly numb towards dark, monstrous things (since his taste does tend to lean towards death, destruction, and horror when it comes to things he appreciates, looking at you scary ocean and shipwrecks), but even so, he'll probably be horrified by what his alternate self really is. When he's growing tentacles out of the blue, he'll probably scream a little bit about it, because it's one thing to appreciate horrific things, and it's quite another to have them happen to you.
SAMPLE