Pvt. Leonard L. Church [A] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
motherfucking_ghost) wrote2019-10-17 11:49 am
motherfucking_ghost) wrote2019-10-17 11:49 am
balance app
Leonard Church: You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise people on a personal level. | |
| APP HMD Sorcerer Shawna |
Character name: Leonard Church/Alpha
Age: Technically he's only existed for about 7 years. He acts like a late-20/early-30something and is based on the mind of someone middle-aged, though. Because AI are like that.
Canon: Red vs Blue
Canon point: 6x19; death
History: Wiki link
Three key adjectives: Volatile, Reluctant, Guilt-ridden
Influential Events:
The Alpha
The worst part about how being the Alpha AI of Project Freelancer influenced Church is that he doesn't even remember it. He only even learned about it in the few hours before the Director (of Project Balance?) offered her hand, so the fact of the matter isn't something he's had a whole lot of time to even process.
But learning about it isn't what we're talking about here. It's about what happened at the beginning. How he was a whole smart AI based off an extremely intelligent, extremely broken man. One who was instilled with a level of care for his agents, those who didn't even know he existed. One who then torn himself apart, who got psychologically tortured into tearing himself apart, by his creator. Impossible fictional scenarios, presented time after time with the outcome being the deaths of his agents, torment that made Alpha tear himself to shreds.
This is the impetus for Church's whole existence in Blood Gulch, of course--hidden from the galaxy, from any who might try to look for him--and the rest of the entire show. But more importantly, fragments of the Alpha lie in the fragmented Alpha. Because he cares. He cares a lot, y'all. He doesn't want to admit it. He'll adamantly deny it. But god damn it, he cares way more than he ever wants to.
And when things go wrong, as Tucker says much later on after Church's passing, he steps up as a leader and takes the blame. And friends, he takes the blame for a lot of things that aren't his fault. There's always some kind of underlying anxiety that he's responsible for people, for the deaths of people, for fixing things when they go wrong, without ever really stopping to wonder why. You can thank Alpha's torment and neuroses for that.
"Time Travel"
It's not really time travel. The Reds and Blues didn't get blown into the future. Church didn't actually travel through the past and cause all the various fuckups that happen through the seasons. But he doesn't know that.
What he knows is that he's gone through countless iterations of himself, desperate to stop an explosion by any means necessary, again and again and again and again ad infinitum. Until he finally got sick of it, decided to stop planning because all he was doing was fucking up, and just winged it until everything worked itself out. (The winging it was, in a very heavy sense, giving up in desperation and defeat.) Because no matter how bad things may seem--"No matter how bad they seem, they can't be any better, and they can't be any worse, because that's the way things fucking are, and you better get used to it, Nancy. Quit yer bitching." Grant him the strength to accept the things he cannot change, the courage to change the things he can, and the wisdom to know the fucking difference.
The other thing that becomes clear once he's set on this being the last time through...time, is he understands his shortcomings. "I just wanna let you know that I'm sorry. I'm sorry I got you mixed up in all this stupid stuff. I'm sorry I wasn't a better guy than I should've been. I'm sorry for...f-well, for a lot of stuff." It's a side of Church that starts coming out a little more after this point. Not frequently, but more. Honesty to others and to himself, putting himself in a vulnerable area where he knows he's a fuck up and can admit it freely.
And then covers that with pride and ego, because that's how he deals with his emotions, but shh.
Tex's "Death"
After everything, the woman he loves enacts a plan to take her evil fuck of an AI, an enemy helmet, and Tucker's alien kid to go become like queen of the universe or something, and as hot as that sounds, that shit ain't kosher. It doesn't even matter because her ship fucking explodes, and as far as he's concerned, she's dead. Like, dead-dead, for real and for true dead this time.
The culmination of everything he's done in this god-forsaken gulch and losing the one person he cares about more than anyone else is the dawning realization of his own independence, bittersweet as it is. He laments that he used to not care and just followed orders, but hating people just because you're told to is some wack-ass bullshit. No, you gotta get to know people, and hate them for the traits you learn about them along the way. Mind you, he counts himself among the people he hates.
The curious thing is this is his response to the age old question: ever wonder why we're here?
Maybe he was here to fight, to take orders, to hate people he was told to. He didn't used to wonder. Now he does, because each of these assholes here has their positives and negatives. They've worked together, grudgingly, and fought each other, gleefully. They've all lost something along the way. And forces beyond their ken have been pulling their strings all along.
And for what?
Reconstruction
After fourteen months stationed by himself, a certain Freelancer by the name of Washington deliberately comes to find him. And the rest of the Blues. And the Reds, they show up, too. And the only thing that makes Church dragged along on this little revelatory ride is the information that Tex's ship wasn't destroyed: it crash landed.
And it becomes a wonderful adventure full of an ultrapowerful crazed Freelancer trying to kill them all, while trying to find Tex, and keep his "ghostliness" a secret, and also dealing with a soldier who's like an actual god damn soldier and not just a stupid sim trooper. Which all ends up eventually coming around to following the soldier into the depths of a Freelancer base with no Tex to be had and the slow revelation of just some of the fuckery that Freelancer was up to. And the promise of finding something to stop the Meta, save their asses, help take down Freelancer, fix all of this.
At the end of the day, that's all he fucking wants. To fix everything that's gone wrong.
Which brings us to the revelation. Of just what he is. That yes, they needed to find the Alpha to help bring this sordid story to a close--and they've done just that. Epsilon, the memory, might be the key, but in a way, it's the key to unlocking the mystery of Church. Not that Wash's explanation of who and what Church is and how he came to be goes over well. Of course it sounds like bullshit--and better to lash out and retreat back into the impossible but safe (being a ghost) than to listen to this frankly horrific nonsense (being a tormented and fractured AI). Church decides it's not his fight, to take on Freelancer, to take on the Director, to take on the Meta--he wants to go home. But Wash reels him back in. Appealing not just to his innate better nature, but dangling the idea of learning the truth of why this has been happening to everyone he's ever cared about in front of him. Downright taunting him with the fact that if Wash is right, and Church doesn't go through with this soon to be suicidal plan, the not knowing will haunt him forever. "Church, you'll never get another shot at fixing all of this."
Hell, it'll kill him either way. Why not go out like a hero (who never gets to see how the story ends)?
Link to Samples: Link to Sample 1; Link to Sample 2;
Chosen path: Sorcerer
7 Abilities:
Subtle Spell: Your spells no longer require you to make verbal or hand gesturing movements and are undetectable unless detected by magical means.
Twinned Spell: You can cast two spells at once.
Shape Water: You can use magic to control the shape of liquid, non magical water up to 5' wide by 5' tall.
Misty Step: You can use magic to teleport to an unoccupied space up to 30 feet away which you can see.
Thunderclap: You can use magic to blast the area around you with thunderous sound.
Burning Hands: You can use magic to make your hands capable of melting objects no stronger than steel.
Why this path?: Inherent otherworldly abilities that he didn't study or choose--he just has them. Rare, in a sense. Being a sorcerer sounds, in many ways, not unlike being a surprise AI with all kinds of strange inherent abilities he never really questioned and got better at handling with time. He never asked to be made, and he never knew where his 'powers' came from. Just that they were awesome, and he was awesome, and being a ghost has perks, y'know? Plus, giving the space marine robot magical powers is a recipe for disaster/hilarity, and he's not nerd enough to study spellbooks, mkay.
blurb code by photosynthesis