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klaus hargreeves ([personal profile] substances) wrote2020-09-23 11:41 pm

klaus hargreeves πŸ‘» the umbrella academy πŸ‘» Η£fenglōm app

Player Information
Name: coffee
Age: 35+
Contact: Discord: coffee #6251, [plurk.com profile] caffemisto (PP or ping), PM
Other Characters: Onni Hotakainen

Character Information
Name: Klaus Hargreeves
Canon: The Umbrella Academy
Canon Point: End of Season 1, right as he's being teleported by Five with the rest of the group.
Age: 30 (if you count his time travel experiences)
History: Klaus Hargreeves @ Umbrella Academy Wiki πŸ‘» additional written canon history can be found here

Personality:

πŸ‘» personality overview: Klaus is a highly emotional and sensitive person who isn't afraid to express his fear or affection, and doesn't try to stop himself from crying. He also has a tendency to be very open about less appealing reactions, frequently pouting, becoming stubborn, and throwing tantrums. He can be a handful with his quickly changing and explosive emotions, but he can also be incredibly warm and soothing with his capacity to care and forgive.

πŸ‘» strengths:

βœ” compassionate: Sensitive and compassionate (at least when he's sober), Klaus cares very much about other people. Always the first to comfort his siblings with a gentle touch or a hug or even by pressing a hand against their shoulders during times of stress, Klaus is very obvious about caring. Even after Vanya killed Leonard, Klaus suggested they find her and ask her what happened instead of jumping to the worst conclusions; after Vanya slit Allison's throat, he still campaigned to set her free instead and help walk her through what he acknowledged must be a terrifying situation for her. When interacting with other people, he seems to treat them (for the most part) with the respect and attention due to another human being, unless they've hurt him or his family (Hazel and Cha-Cha) or he has to manipulate them (manager of the prosthetic company). Compared to the others, he seems to be much more aware of the people around them and that those people have lives and personalities and feelings - I speculate that this is likely because he's experienced life as a marginalized person, which has increased his awareness of others.

βœ” forgiving: Klaus has been addicted to one thing or another (alcohol, drugs, smoking) since he was very young, and with addiction comes a whole slew of terrible habits and traits - stealing from people you care about, being flaky and out of contact, relying too heavily on the kindness of family. Klaus has done all of those things, and a lot more, has been in and out of rehab and likely homeless on the streets at various times. He's done bad things, and so he understands how people can do bad things, and is far more likely to overlook or forgive bad behaviour on the part of people around him. This is shown in canon on various occasions, as all of his siblings have treated him badly at various points, but he still cares for them. The most poignant example is probably when his brother Luther drunkenly choked him half to death and only seconds after he stopped, Klaus was trying to comfort him through a depressive mood swing. Klaus gets it, how people can mess up spectacularly and still not be bad people.

βœ” resilient & adaptable: Klaus takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' both mentally and physically - during the show, he's absolutely put through the wringer, he's kidnapped and tortured, survives almost a year in the Vietnam war thanks to some unexpected time travel, and he goes through terrible physical drug withdrawals twice in 10 episodes (a span of time of about a week). Despite all this, and despite a lot of complaining, whining, and often crying, he's on his feet, mobile, and ready to help save the world, even when his siblings don't necessarily think he's capable of helping them. Klaus might not be ambitious or big on exploring, but he's willing to try new things, and if they backfire, he's got a high tolerance for pain, traumatic experiences, and generally feeling terrible. He might want to quit, but he very rarely actually does.

πŸ‘» weaknesses:

✘ unreliable: With his...variable emotional state, easy tendency to boredom, history of addiction, and low tolerance for stress or criticism, Klaus isn't exactly easy to rely on. Klaus is adaptable, but the other side of that coin is that he's also changeable, with his opinions, determinations, and loyalties (at least which sibling's side he's taking) switching rapidly. He has a tendency to wander off when he's on lookout duty, to not show up, to change his mind and swing rapidly back and forth between opinions, whether it's choosing to save the world or not, or choosing to get sober or not. Everything about him is built on this changeable base, and as a result, he tends to be unstable, changeable, flaky, and all over the place. It's chaotic and not always enjoyable to either for Klaus himself or for the people around him.

✘ impulsive: Klaus is not, shall we say, a big thinker. He's intelligent enough, but he's always a little fried, a little frazzled, a little distracted, either by intoxicants or seeing the dead, being dope sick or grieving or in pain or any number of other things. He tends to live his life by impulse, driven by emotion, jumping into things full throttle, changing his mind on a whim and diving into things whenever he wants. Klaus isn't the type to move through life methodically, with a plan or any perception of actions and consequences, he just barrels forward, stumbles through life and goes with the flow. Whether it's choosing to get sober so he can see his dead lover Dave again or wavering between wanting to save the world and not wanting to several times over the course of one episode, Klaus is unpredictable to say the least.

✘ fatalistic: While he is incredibly resilient and has a great capacity to survive, Klaus is not exactly an optimist. His default is to assume that things are going to turn out for the worst, and he frequently voices it in a sarcastic, slightly cynical way. Klaus plays it off as a joke, but he genuinely seems to think that life is inherently difficult, the future is not bright, and people are going to be assholes. As much as he likes being proven wrong, he doesn't ever really expect to.

✘ manipulative & grey morality: When he needs to, Klaus can be very manipulative and morally grey. He's pretended to be his brother Five's father, hurt himself and Five, and then used the injuries to blackmail someone into telling him what he wanted. He's stolen things from his family members including his recently deceased father to fence them and buy drugs. He's shoplifted and lived on the street and stayed in a relationship just to have a place to live. There isn't really a moral code that he follows.

✘ slothfulness & cowardice: While Klaus has a lot of very valid reasons to be afraid, beyond that he's also just very very unwilling to put himself in danger, unless it's danger related to getting drugs or something else he desperately wants. He's had to be pushed and shoved and manipulated and threatened into actually getting off his ass and going out to use his powers for good and save the world. He's spent his whole life running away from his powers because he was afraid of ghosts and the dark, and that fear has driven him to addiction and any number of other negative situations just trying to avoid putting himself too far out there.

πŸ‘» other:

β‡Œ ptsd: While not a personality trait, Klaus is deeply affected by his PTSD. Whenever there are loud noises, flashing lights, or he's confined in a small dark place, Klaus starts getting flashbacks - visual, auditory, the whole works. These episodes cause him to panic and completely lose the thread of whatever he's doing, generally rendering him incapable of standing or moving or doing anything but crouching down with his arms around the back of his neck crying.

β‡Œ addiction: For basically his entire life, Klaus has struggled with addiction. He's addicted to pretty much any substance you can be addicted to, and the moment the going gets tough he tends to default to a desperate scramble for drugs that overrides most other instincts he has. This is something he's been (moderately) successful in fighting, though it's still an ongoing problem. After all, he's only been sober for two days at his canon point.

Abilities & Skills: Klaus has the ability to see and interact with dead people. When he isn't inebriated or in an altered state of mind, Klaus can see people in the afterlife, and interact with them visually and verbally. The spirits take a variety of forms - most often semi-transparent horror visions of the dead that scream and whisper his name or apparitions that seem to interact with him verbally and visually as if they were actually present with him. Most of these apparitions show any visible signs of any injuries or conditions that led to their deaths and speak the languages that they spoke in life, which sometimes means that Klaus can't understand them. The exception to his is his brother, Ben, who he has been seeing whenever he was sober since shortly after Ben died. Ben appears perfectly normal with no outward sign of how he died, and seems to be solidly visible, audible, and present sooner after Klaus stops drugs than any of the other apparitions.

Klaus also has the ability to interact physically with the dead, and to conjure spirits and allow them to manifest into the physical world. He has, at several points, allowed Ben to interact with the physical world - Ben punched him in the face, he allowed Ben to drag Diego to safety, and in a fight where the siblings were badly outnumbered, Klaus pulled Ben into the physical world and allowed Ben to use his eldritch horror ability to save them. This physical use of Klaus' ability is rare, takes a lot of effort, and requires at least a day or two of solid sobriety to manage.

Klaus has spent most of his life trying to dull his abilities, not train in them, so he has very little control beyond the passive seeing of spirits that he can't 'turn off' without being intoxicated. It is stated by his father that he has barely scratched the surface of what he can do, but at this point he (and the audience) is unaware of what else he might be capable of.

Inventory/Companions:

πŸ‘» Clothing: striped tank top, Vietnam War era army jacket with the sleeves torn off, leather pants with the sides laced shut, Vietnam War era military dog tags with his late boyfriend's name and information, bowling shoes, maybe possibly underwear, probably no socks

Choice: Witch
Reason: He's spent his whole life hating his "superpower" and I think it'd be really nice for him to get something like a superpower that isn't just full-bore awful. Also, he's been surrounded by nightmares and horror for as long as he can remember, so I wouldn't mind sparing the kid the body horror of a Monster transformation.

Sample:

πŸ‘» tdm top-level

πŸ‘» log from a previous game (November of last year)

πŸ‘» ic inbox thread from a previous game (November-December of last year)

πŸ‘» network thread from a previous game (January of this year)

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