dara

MUN: specialmandate AIM: specialmandate PLURK: specialmandate CHARA E-MAIL: elizabeth.sherman@compass.net

This also doubles as a general HMD - anon is enabled and ip logging is off (I can also screen comments if preferred), so talk to me! o/

player.
NAME/HANDLE: Dara
PERSONAL JOURNAL: specialmandate
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yup
CONTACT: specialmandate @ plurk;aim
OTHER CHARACTERS: Tali'Zorah keelahselai


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Elizabeth 'Liz' Sherman
SERIES: B.P.R.D / Hellboy
CANON POINT: after The Dead Remembered
AGE: 14
APPEARANCE: Err, the girl. Obviously.

PERSONALITY:

"Aren't you afraid I'll... burn you?"
"Nope."

Fun fact: if you do a search on the word 'fire' in this app, your word processor will blow up. Mostly because generally when you talk about Liz at around this age, her pyrokinetics influence almost literally everything about her, so it's pretty hard not to talk extensively about them.

So, Liz can often be very normal. She's a bratty, sometimes very self-absorbed quintessential teenager, and her minders have had it to the back teeth with her.

But then you remember that she has minders. She's been a science experiment for the past two years. She has nightmares of that time she killed half her neighbourhood. Incidentally, she also just got dragged into some woods by the angry ghost of a witch. Unsurprisingly, Liz can also be very not normal.

What she can do is a complete mystery, especially to Liz herself; she's been struggling with it for four years now, and its very existence is the cause of giant walls between her and other people. Most of those walls are imposed by the BPRD, and it's pretty understandable that she would test her boundaries with them - later in her life, she'll leave the BPRD somewhere around 15 times, and yet she always comes back. And that latter is where the walls she herself imposes comes in. Liz is different from other people and, at this time in her life especially, a danger to them, and she knows it - she has only very recently stopped thinking that the reason for being the way she is is because of some kind of sin she committed. Often all she feels is left is to go back to the one place where she has ever felt like she fits in.

And that's already somewhat apparent at this early age - the BPRD has given her something resembling stability since the incident, although it's a stability that comes with your best friend being a demon, most of rest of the people you interact with wishing they could still wear flame resistant suits, and the only trip outside you've ever taken was to exorcise a ghost. It's what most people just wouldn't want - but stability is control, and control is not setting fire to the whole neighbourhood.

While she does sometimes resent that people at the BPRD are so scared of her (with the exception of Bruttenholm and Hellboy), at the same time she doesn't exactly blame them. At the beginning of her time with the BPRD, she actively told them to leave her alone, that she wasn't safe to be around - she was afraid of what the fire might do - but at the same time, when Hellboy ignored the warnings of everyone (including Liz herself) to come and sit with her, it was the beginning of the two becoming fast friends. She simultaneously wants the world to stay away from her and also to be a part of it - which is both a hallmark of a bratty teenager and someone who can burn down a whole neighbourhood.

There are two people in her life to whom she actually listens (sometimes), and one of those two she will even actually talk to: Hellboy. Despite the outward differences between a seven foot tall red demon and a fourteen year old girl, the two actually do have things in common. They both have little understanding of who they are (at this point), they both are being/have been raised by scientists in labs, they are both drastically different from everybody else around them. Hellboy, however, is much more comfortable in his own skin (especially at this point) and with his situation, and he's the one who, from the start, has been a good influence on her, helping Liz to break out of the isolated coccoon she and the scientists created around her, making her think of people in ways that aren't 'I could kill you by accident; get away from me', and making her think of herself as something more than just an out of control weapon. He's essentially her big brother figure, although at this point in canon, Liz herself doesn't really think of it that way.

Liz is established to have been raised Catholic. Besides meaning she likely went to Catholic school, visits church regularly and had probably gone to confession for a couple of years, this also means that when the fires started, even as a 10 year old, her automatic assumption was that they were caused by sins she herself had committed, that the fires were a punishment. So of course, she concentrated extra hard on study and on prayer and on being good, and when the fires subsequently stopped for a period, even though the real cause was her own strength of willpower, she assumed she had simply appeased God for whatever she had done wrong and credited prayer.

By the age of 14, though, she's saying that she 'used to be Catholic'. While this could just be that living in a government facility being studied leaves little time for prayer or general devotion.... Probably not. The fact was that the prayer, the study, all the things she did.... They didn't do anything. She was taught that atoning for your sins helps you surpass them and move on from them, and yet in fact, her parents and brother are gone, her relatives have cast her out.... To a child on her own like that, it must have been a powerful message.

And yet at the end of The Dead Remembered, Liz is shown putting her crucifix back on (and is quite often seen wearing one throughout the rest of canon). The encounter with the witch showed her the simple fact that people are still people no matter what they believe - for good or for ill; God and the church didn't do anything to Liz or the witch. While she's trying to 'exorcise' the ghost by herself (good going, Liz, ignore the expert and do it yourself. Good plan, yes), she says:

"Do you believe in Heaven? Because I think you can go there, if you want."

And then she shows Teddy how she can light a cigarette with her finger. It's not an end to a crisis of faith, but it's a step forward.

Essentially, faith and religion aren't as simple as 'God punishes you when you do wrong and rewards you when you do good', or even 'religion is a phony thing that is nothing but hateful'. To her, it's starting to be that maybe it's what you personally make of it that counts. And later on - even now, to a small extent - it's a comfort and maybe something to be anchored by.

Besides Hellboy, the main other person she's gotten to know is Trevor Bruttenholm, former director of the BPRD and Hellboy's adoptive father. Liz had met Buttenholm probably only a few times before The Dead Remembered, which essentially takes place because Hellboy bugged Buttenholm into taking Liz along to exorcise this ghost haunting someone's house. Liz was no more friendly with Bruttenholm to begin with than she was anybody else - she downright ignored him, was short with him, generally was pretty damn rude and didn't particularly act like she respected him. However, later on, she's shown actively looking for his approval - trying to show him she's not losing control of the fire, running back to the house and looking for him when she gets into trouble. By the time they come back from their little field trip, with Bruttenholm actually not only showing respect and courtesy for Liz (and more importantly, her acknowledging it), but also proving himself to actually be better at exorcising ghosts than two fourteen year olds (once more - good going, Liz).

As for Liz herself, she can be an utter brat - she'll snark at people she's only just met, or stick her face in a book and ignore them depending on the precise delicate nature of the 'I don't care' image she cares enough to project. She'll snark at people when she gets to know them as well - and that's just the ones she likes. If she doesn't like a person, they'll know about it - Liz is one of those people who doesn't suffer fools gladly. As I said, she's a teenager.

However, by her current canon point, she has been mostly alone for two years - of the few people she actually sees whom she can interact with, there are times when she refuses to speak to even any of them but Hellboy. She's a lonely, isolated, depressed young girl who hasn't laid eyes on anyone her own age until very recently in a long time. It's understandable that she would hit it off so well, so immediately with the first person her age she meets - Teddy. Quite aside from anything else, he was company who actually got her, with whom she could just be just Liz and not 'Sherman, Elizabeth Anne: Pyrotechnic abilities first manifest at age 11...'.

Because at this point, even she has trouble seeing 'just Liz' sometimes.


ABILITIES:

Pyrokinesis - Liz can spontaneously generate fire. At this point, this ability is very much uncontrolled. She can do it at will, but also it'll just pop out at emotional moments and cause havok. At worst, she has razed a whole block to the ground - the power is extremely unpredictable and has a very wide range and high destructive capability. She's on drugs to suppress the uncontrolled eruptions, but they will run out quickly, so it's going to be all willpower from here on out. Also, understandably, she's immune to being burned.

Liz's power likely comes from Vril, the Secret Fire, which to boil things down to their simplest components is the power of God, stolen at the dawn of the Earth. It's one of the keys to the whole series, and it's not that well understood. Right now, Liz and the BPRD don't even know it exists. At different times it has been implied to be an intrinsic part of Liz herself and a separate living entity all of its own (these two may not be mutually exclusive), being without it has been devastating to the point of terminal on multiple occasions, but later on she seems to lose it with no ill effects.... Basically, it's all very strange. For now, let's just say - this fire is at the very least deeply connected to Liz's being, and removing it would kill her.

POSSESSIONS:

Clothes (button up shirt, knee length skirt, long socks/black shoes)
Crucifix necklace
Saint Christopher medal
One bottle of pills (likely antidepressants - apart from everything else, they stop her losing control of the fire so much)

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