eudio app

[scryinghope]

PLAYER INFORMATION

NAME: Pur
AGE: 28
CONTACT: PM through journal, please!
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Hopeless
CANON: Skulduggery Pleasant
AGE: Centuries. Canon never quite specified. Chances are he was about 400 when he died, though.
CANON POINT: A minute or so before his death.

BACKGROUND: Wiki page for Hopeless, with links to the war he was in. The wiki takes some licence with interpreting his magic; since magic is a big part of a sorcerer, here’s some dot-points for how I interpret it.

• Hopeless’s magic is never explicitly stated, but implications are that he’s a mind-reader.
  
  
• The wiki suggests he’s an illusionist based on his description as being a man ‘with one name and many faces’, but this could equally mean shapeshifting and he shows no evidence of either kind of magic. This assumption also ignores the relevance of the first part of the quote, about his name.
  
  
• The above quote places equal relevance on Hopeless’s name as on his many faces. Sorcerers usually choose their names based on traits (Skulduggery Pleasant), magic (Tenebrae) or flashiness (Bison Dragonclaw). If Hopeless were hopeless in mentality or hopeless in skill he wouldn’t have survived as a black-ops soldier, so it can’t be the first. Sorcerers wholesale are too arrogant to be self-derogatory with a name like ‘Hopeless’, so it can’t be the last. Hopelessness is a state of mind, implying that Hopeless’s magic relates to mind magic.
  
  
• If Hopeless’s magic is mental, then the second part of the above quote suggests his mentality is extremely fluid. It means that his magic is passive rather than active, so it’s not memory-erasure or another form of coercive mind-manipulation.
  
  
• In Hopeless’s only canonical appearance he pre-empts a man about to shoot him ‘so quick no one knew quite what was happening until the man hit the floor with a broken nose and no gun in his hand’. The only way Hopeless could be faster than any of the other Dead Men – including the skeleton, who has no muscle to hold him back – is if he knew it was going to happen first. On another occasion in the same short-story, while the other Dead Men are dealing with an ambush, Hopeless goes out and finds a man they’re looking for and has him all tied-up and waiting when the others arrive. There’s no narrative explanation beyond the fact that he was there with this bloke they were looking for, which implies that he found their target through unseeable means.
  
  
• The above instances could be either passive mind-reading or precognition, but we get plenty of precognitive characters in main canon. There is one who is powerful enough to receive passive visions and whose mentality is fluid as a result, but it also renders his reflexes almost useless. Hopeless’s actions in battle are directed and controlled. Therefore, he can’t be passively precognitive.
  
  
• In the main series, the titular character comments that ‘he once knew a man who could read minds’. Skulduggery isn’t the sort of person who says he ‘knows’ people unless they’re really good friends. Canon states that Skulduggery and Hopeless knew each other well before the war, which began sometime in the 1600s.
  
  
• The main series establishes true mind-reading as being nearly impossible. It’s mysterious, secretive. Contrast to the other Dead Man who died, Larrikin, about whom we know more, Hopeless is equally mysterious and secretive, which suggests he has reason to be and the Dead Men have reason to keep him so.
  

INCENTIVE/FIT: Coming right before his death-by-poison, knowing that he is poisoned, Hopeless would accept living in Eudio because he has no other alternative. He wants to live, because he has people who rely on him and whom he doesn’t want to leave.

His incentive would just to be that he can, after his contract is up, go back to his canonpoint without dying right after he gets there.

Hopeless has led a life of deprivation and hugs and cuddles are very much one of those things he really really likes, but doesn’t tend to get as often as he should. Though he’d been a soldier for a few centuries, it’s not his default; he’s a peacemonger, and would spend his time in a city at peace helping others in the ways he knows best. Being a mind-reader, this means offering therapy to all the people.

He’s also huge on consent because of the nature of his magic being inherently invasive. He’d understand the city’s set-up really well because of that, and adhere to it, and even help enforce it if necessary – especially when it comes to himself, what he hears, and what he says.

It’s because of his magic (details below!) that Hopeless does have a few sexual hang-ups. He’s not opposed to it in theory; he would never look down on anyone for sex unless it was non-consensual. It’s more that Hopeless, thanks to his magic, can never be totally sure what he feels about other people, or whether what he feels are echoes of what others feel. Is it fair to be with someone when he can’t say for sure his feelings for them are real? Is it fair on them, on him, on either? He doesn’t know, so he takes the issue out of the equation with abstinence.

He has had sex before. Once. When he was drunk and at a party where he got a little bit mentally lost in a bunch of other drunken men being horny, and hooked up with a … well, hooker. (The end result was epic amounts of guilt and slipping out in the morning after leaving her all his money.)

Hopeless is still a sexual creature. He still feels arousal, and since he can hear other people having sex around him he’s gotten really really good at being lowkey and restrained about it. He just doesn’t self-indulge, since that opens doors he’s afraid to open for himself, and would refuse nearly all sexual interactions – though be perfectly willing to engage in platonic intimacies like snuggles.


SAMPLES: War-time era thread with Erskine Ravel. This one is a good example of how Hopeless’s magic has given him those hang-ups over having sex, but how he adjusts to having platonic good times in spite of that.

From Eudio's own TDM. Several different threads available for perusal!

Dear_mun thread with a Bioshock Big Daddy. This one is too old to fit the app constraints, but it’s a good example in how Hopeless can be emotionally subverted by the people around him, especially without a second mind around as a balance. (Just one note – I call him ‘Descry’ in narrative because this was threaded before he was confirmed to only have one name, and headcanoned one for him.)


ANYTHING ELSE? Just one thing regarding Hopeless’s name. In canon he’s confirmed to only have one name, but it was a relatively recent revelation. Since I headcanoned another name for him before then, this is still sometimes in use – but only among Hopeless’s best friends, the Dead Men; and it’s never used in narrative referring to himself.

Otherwise, Hopeless has a range of mundane skills. He was a beekeeper, and he makes beautiful leather books as a hobby. You know the sort; the gorgeous filigreed pieces of art you see in museums and monasteries. Which, incidentally, is where he was raised, so he’s fluent in Latin as well as three dozen other languages and can quote the Bible and various and sundry prayers from memory. He cooks, cleans, gardens, and while he knows a little bit about almost everything, theoretical knowledge doesn’t always equate to practical skill – he’s not very good at dancing, for instance, even though he has hundreds of dances stuffed in his head.

He can also fight. He was trained by men who are extremely good fighters, and he compensates for any deficiencies with the fact that he always knows what his opponent is about to do. Unless they’re Skulduggery, who cheats by being dead.

Otherwise, magic! As mentioned above, canon implies that Hopeless is a mind-reader, and because of how that magic works (‘one name, many faces’) he only has a certain level of control over it.

• Hopeless can’t turn his magic off. His mind is like a radio set permanently to ‘receive’ while everyone else’s is set to ‘transmit’. This unfortunately means his magic is opt-out rather than opt-in. (NOTE: As per acceptance and mod-note found here, Hopeless's magic is opt-in and his default is a staticky sense of present-mind.)
  
  
• Hopeless can minimise what he hears. The more people are nearby, the easier this is due to the beehive effect; everything becomes background noise, like humming bees, and he won’t hear as much directly. He will still be lured by strong emotion or thoughts relating directly to him; the latter acts like a bypass while the former acts like a riptide, which means he has to be careful not to drown in someone else’s emotions.
  
  
• The above is actually a benefit to the people Hopeless reads. When someone has a secret they don’t want anyone to know, he will feel that sense of privacy and be unlikely to reveal the secret. This, on top of his vow of silence when he was a monk.
  
  
• Reiterating: Vow of silence. Hopeless takes consent so seriously that he keeps the secrets of villains as long as those secrets aren’t relevant in trying to stop the villains from killing people. If he has to use the knowledge he gains from mind-reading, he will try to do so without actively revealing that information to others. He only reveals relevant information as a last resort and to stop others from being hurt or killed.
  
  
• Most of the time, Hopeless just hears a person’s ‘present mind’ – in practice, I treat him as if he’s privy to the thought narrative in his threading partner’s tags. This can be especially useful in battle, since he can pre-empt most opponents’ actions by reading their instinctive reactions and reacting to them instinctively himself.
  
  
• While Hopeless does dim as much of what he hears as possible, because of how a person’s thoughts and emotions change from moment to moment he does, with long enough interactions, learn a great deal about them.
  
  
• Though Hopeless minimises what he hears, he can read a person so deeply as to know their core within a few minutes. This isn’t a thing he does aside from exceptional circumstances, because it usually means he drowns in their mind, forgets who he is, and becomes a mental copy of them. Where villains are concerned, this is obviously majorly traumatising, because it means he literally stops caring, in whatever unique way the villain doesn’t care. And then has to come back from that. If he needs to know something he’s much more likely to strike up a conversation and talk them around to it, because at least that way he won’t go insane.
  
  
• Hopeless’s kind of mind-reading is canonically not affected by mental barriers. The only person whose mind couldn’t be read by this kind of magic is Skulduggery, because as a skeleton he doesn’t have a physical brain; therefore, Hopeless can’t read beings without physical organic brains (skeletons, robots, possibly aliens whose brains are in like ten different places).
  
  
• That being said, cross-canon mental barriers may be able to keep him from reading someone past their present mind, or turn their present minds staticky, etc etc, as needed.
  
  
• Hopeless also can’t read people over long-distance networks, like phones. His range is about a mile, uninterrupted by walls and most magical barriers, but he still needs to be in a certain proximity to hear someone, and then impetus to notice them in particular.
  
  
• Hopeless’s permissions post is over here! This is primarily for folks whose characters have mental defences or who would prefer Hopeless can’t read their character’s minds for one reason or another. Cross-dimensional interference, yo. Alternately, if your character has something major which overshadows most of their thoughts, feel free to give me the lowdown on that.