ooc | application
[series]: Blood+
[character]: Nathan Mahler
[character history / background]: Here are some Wiki articles, although they aren't fantastic.
A fair deal of his history (or... likely history) is covered in the personality section, since I can never seem to entirely separate the two. On the whole, everything before what we see of him in canon is a big question mark, since he's so ridiculously vague and so good at dancing around things. It's obvious that he's been playing with everyone all along, so whatever all the characters may have assumed about him is incorrect. (My personal headcanon, at least, is that he became a Chevalier to Diva and Saya's mother around the beginning of the thirteenth century and has pretty much just been traveling around the world, chilling, and enjoying the show ever since.)
Within the span of the series, he's living in New York as a renowned opera producer, leeching sponsorship money from Solomon, posing as Diva's Chevalier (which no one ever appears to question), babysitting cocoons, and generally aiding Diva and the others from the sidelines. Though he initially seems to be something of a comic relief role, as the episodes progress, it's gradually revealed that there's more to him than initially let on, and that he isn't truly controlled by anyone. At the end of the series, once Diva has been killed, he asks Saya to kill him as well, to which she obliges -- but in the final episode, he's seen posing as a reporter in a crowd, so it's reasonably obvious that he faked his death.
[character abilities]: Nathan is a Chevalier, the second-highest tier of Chiropteran evolution. As such, he has an enormous deal of power in order to protect his Queen. In his usual human shape, he has remarkable superhuman strength and speed (it appears to be practically teleportation), superior regenerative capabilities, and no need for any sustenance besides the occasional drink of blood. He also has a true Chiropteran form (which... in his case just kind of looks like a ridiculous alien mantis) that's presumably even stronger, although he never actually fought in full form. He can change individual parts of his body into Chiropteran form at will while still maintaining most of his human form (he's specifically done this with his arms... purple... mantis arms).
He also doesn't age and pretty much can't die. In anime canon, a Chevalier can only be killed by the blood of the opposing Queen or, less romantically, by decapitation or full incineration (the manga lets him be revived after having his head torn off and organs ripped out, but we'll ignore that because lol what the hell is going on with the manga). Given that the previous generation of Queens are dead, it'd pretty much have to be one of the latter.
[character personality]:
Nathan is probably the most enigmatic character of Blood+. Of all Diva's Chevaliers (...canon seems to switch between using an s for the plural form and not, so I'm just... doing it here for clarity's sake since idfk), he is by far the most playful and easygoing, but there are a lot of unanswered questions lurking beneath the surface.
Compared to the others, he doesn't actually do much; he leaves almost all the fighting up to his brothers while he watches amusedly from a distance or watches over Diva's babies. Yet he has influence over all of them, even Amshel, the supposed head of the Chevaliers, implying that he has much more power than he regularly exhibits. The others frequently write him off as a flippant annoyance, but in the rare cases in which he seriously threatens one of them, they listen, even if they don't know his true background. Perhaps they have a vague idea of what he may be capable of, or perhaps they're just so caught off-guard by his sudden change in personality that they're afraid to test it.
His relationship to Diva is never explicitly explained, but given that Saya's blood didn't kill him and judging from what was implied in a conversation between him and Amshel in episode 48, he isn't actually Diva's Chevalier at all. Amshel comments jokingly that Nathan acts like he's seen it all before, to which Nathan replies (to Amshel's surprise) that he has, cryptically remarking that the mummified chiropteran from whom Diva and Saya had been born had had her own faithful Chevalier. It can be inferred from this that he was speaking of himself; thus, he has been around much longer than any of them and doesn't have a true connection to either queen, which helps explain his more detached and supervisory role within the Chevaliers, and the fact that he's hardly fazed by anything. (Regarding his age -- after doing some brief research into actual mummies discovered in Iceland -- yeah, I can't believe I did this either -- I'm placing him at around 800 years: 100 years with his queen, 550 years mummification time, 150 years since Saya and Diva's birth. As a result of having lived through so many eras, he would really be very detached from everything but enduring fiction.)
Probably his most obvious characteristic is that he presents himself as a flaming gay stereotype, wearing ruffled clothes and cowboy boots, using feminine speech patterns, rocking out to opera on his headphones in airports, and being ambiguously flirty with both Hagi and his fellow Chevaliers, particularly James, who does not appreciate this.
(QUICK ASIDE ON MY INTERPRETATION OF HIS ORIENTATION -- As stated, he openly flirts with men in canon; however, his cliche persona slips at times when he reveals hints of his true self, dropping his usual feminine speech and sounding much more masculine, so it's fairly clear that he's playing this up to an extent. He doesn't appear to be at all opposed to the idea of having Saya as his bride along with the other Chevaliers, and he has presumably had sex with Diva before along with all his brothers as a part of Amshel's reproductive experiments. While he was quite probably a homosexual man in his life as a human, it's biologically ingrained in all Chevaliers to love their own queen and to mate with the other, so it can be assumed that Nathan would have felt the same urges while the former queens of his generation were alive. He might still feel some sort of urges toward the current queens, Diva and Saya, but they would be significantly decreased as he doesn't share the same sort of bond with either. SO ANYWAY. I think about chiropteran biology a lot, okay. 8|)
He appears to be very cheerful and good-natured compared to the rest, taking things much less seriously in most instances, but despite this, sometimes plays the part of the more practical mother figure -- he's the one who breaks up fights so that his brothers don't destroy the house. He does also have a somewhat fatherly relationship with Diva, showing some possession over her when he speaks to Amshel, gently scolding her at times without taking any actual punitive action, and enjoying getting her ready for her performances.
While the rest of the Chevaliers are largely involved in financial, military, and government operations, Nathan contributes in a different way, making his living as a producer for the New York Metropolitan Opera (actually sapping money from the other Chevaliers' corporations to sponsor his productions without asking), a job that he clearly adores. He loves the music, he loves the drama. Everything is about theatrics with him, because at this point in his long life, even reality is really nothing more than a show for him. He plans out fights against Saya so that they occur on stage in front of a proper backdrop, and watches with amusement from the balcony as the story unfolds. If anything disrupts his perfect staging, it doesn't matter how close his side is to winning -- he'll call the whole thing off until later.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Post-series, around the time of the epilogue.
[journal post]:
Oh, dear, this is certainly unexpected. A free gift on top of everything, though! I suppose it would be terribly greedy to ask about its scheduling capabilities.
Ah~ And who am I even speaking to right now, I wonder~? Don't be shy. ♥
Well! I don't suppose anyone will be willing to make it simple, but I really do need to get back, of course. After all, the curtain on our production of La Traviata is scheduled to go up in only six days. It would hardly be appropriate for them to carry on with a missing producer, would it~? ♥ I wonder what all the papers would say.
[third person / log sample]:
Nathan raises his wine glass to the sky and gazes into it as he rotates it about in his fingers, smiling at the way the sunlight filters through it, shining down red onto the table before him.
And when he pauses and lets his gaze focus, he can see Amshel and Diva on the other side of the glass -- distant, red-tinted figures. He briefly debates putting Renata Tebaldi on hold and removing the earbuds so that he can hear just what it is they're saying, but, ah-- she's nearing the climax of the piece now, and who is he to cut her off?
He hardly needs to hear their words anyway, after all. The pout on his Diva's face -- though sometimes it's almost hard to remember that she's still his Diva when she's wearing that poor boy's appearance as she is now -- and the firmness in Amshel's hands as he takes the basket from her arms... For him, at least, that's more than enough to understand.
A brief caress of her cheek, simultaneously loving and possessive, and the two part ways. Nathan lowers his glass, setting it down on the garden table with a light clink as his older brother walks past. Amshel turns his head only slightly to look at him as he hears the sound, sharp blue eyes giving a look of marked disapproval, but Nathan simply smiles and waves, an innocent grin that conceals so much more than the others will ever suspect, one that doesn't fade even once Amshel and Diva's children are inside the house and out of view.
He lets out a soft sigh and rests his head in his hand, eyes shifting now toward Diva, wandering like a ghost amongst the broken pillars of the garden. Now, finally, he puts Renata on pause, letting himself instead be immersed in the music of the here and now as the notes pour forth from Diva's pale lips with such a different feeling than they had just a few short months ago. And Nathan is certain that he's the only one who's noticed.
It's sad, and sometimes it almost disgusts him, the way Amshel's single-minded obsession blinds him to the big picture, to the very needs and desires of the one around whom his existence revolves. All of them are blind to the cycle they're perpetuating, and not a one of them seems to see the tragic finale to which they're all headed.
And despite it all, Nathan will say nothing, will remain in the audience until the closing of the final curtain. Because the emptiness, the blindness; these are the things that have persisted throughout human drama since the beginning of time. They're the themes present in nearly every meaningful work, from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Stoppard. They're everything that's beautiful about human nature, everything that can still make him feel.
And for all their supposed superiority to humans, in the end, they fall to the very same flaws of those from which they were born. It's the greatest irony, the most beautiful tragedy of all.
And even if it pains him, Nathan will watch until it's over.