OOC; Application and Information
Series: Kuroshitsuji (The Black Butler)
Series' Medium: Kuroshitsuji is a manga, but is going to be made into an anime come mid to late October.
Character you're applying for: Grell Sutcliffe (or Grell Satcliffe, there is no official Romanization for his name yet. I generally go with "Satcliffe," but recent fandom trends point toward Sutcliffe.)
Character's role in their canon: Grell starts off in the series as a background character, the butler to the Burnett Estate and its surviving widow, Angelina Darres, otherwise known as Madam Red. Madam Red is a secondary character, Ciel Phantomhive's aunt. Over time, Grell is revealed as the antagonist in the first major arc of the manga series.
Character's age: His age is unknown, although I would say he's probably immortal and, therefore, ageless. He looks to be in his early to late twenties though.
Character's gender: Male.
Character's "Real Name": Geoffrey Burnett
Please give us a detailed personal history of your character: Grell Sutcliffe is first revealed as the Burnett Estate butler when Ciel Phantomhive and his butler, Sebastian Michaelis, move to the Phantomhive townhouse within London after receiving a letter from the Queen. Madam Red, otherwise known as Angelina Darres, comes to the townhouse to visit her nephew and brings her butler along with her. Ciel was called to London to investigate the strange murder of a young woman named Mary Ann Nichols in the Whitechapel area. The brutal way in which the woman was murdered and dissected led the London papers to nickname the murderer something truly gruesome - Jack the Ripper. Grell accompanies Ciel, Sebastian, Madam Red, and another of their acquaintances, Lau (a Chinese "businessman" with somewhat shady connections), as they begin looking for information regarding the murders. Grell plays a nearly inconsequential role throughout the investigation. He spends most of his time just trying to keep Madam Red's hotheadedness under control, or bringing her tea and running small errands.
After speaking to an underground informant known as the Undertaker, Ciel's group learns that the suspect must have medical knowledge. Ciel orders Sebastian to put together a list of people who could possibly be the Ripper and crosscheck their alibis and Sebastian takes off to do just that. And when I say "takes off," I mean he steps out of the speeding carriage that Grell is driving. At that moment, Grell seems to take a liking to Sebastian for his dedication to his job as Ciel's butler and his amazing abilities. On the other hand, Grell gets lost on the way back to the Phantomhive townhouse and it takes longer than expected to return. Once they arrive, however, they're greeted by Sebastian who has already finished gathering the suspect list and has even finished preparations for afternoon tea. Yet again, impressed by Sebastian's abilities, Grell swoons a little more for him in the background.
Sebastian has narrowed the suspects down to one person, the Viscount Druitt, Aleister Chenbar. Everyone goes undercover to investigate Aleister, and although he's caught and found guilty of holding illegal human auctions behind the scenes of his social galas, another murder is committed while he's in police custody. Annie Chapman dies by Jack the Ripper's hands and Ciel and Sebastian have to look over the list of suspects again. That night, as Ciel and Sebastian go over the paperwork and suspect list, Madam Red appears and asks Ciel to play chess with her in order to give him 'a break.' Grell appears as well and is told to make tea, but he's so terrible at it that Madam sends him out to redo it all.
While he's out, Ciel and Madam talk about the past and Ciel eventually wins the game and retires for the night. Grell returns just as he leaves and is witness to Madam Red asking Sebastian to stay by Ciel's side and protect him because he won't turn away from the path he's on, no matter how dirty and twisted it might become. Sebastian retires after his master and Grell looks to his mistress, only to see her get a strange look in her eyes as a storm rolls in. He seems taken aback by the coldness in her eyes, but before we can see what happens next, the scene cuts away to Ciel and Sebastian. Ciel realizes that Sebastian hasn't been telling him the entire truth in that Sebastian only collected a list of possible human suspects. With this new knowledge, they once again go out to see who Jack the Ripper really is.
To do this, they stake out Mary Kelley's home (the next assumed victim), standing guard at the only entrance to the alleyway to her home. Unfortunately, even though they're guarding the entrance, they hear a scream and rush to the room to find her freshly ripped apart inside. Ciel is the first on the scene, but Sebastian covers his eyes to shield him from the horror as he speaks to "Jack," who is still inside.
Grell Sutcliffe steps out, covered in blood.
He tries to say that he was just passing by, but since Ciel and Sebastian were guarding the only entranceway, Sebastian refuses this excuse. He then calls Grell out on what he really is - inhuman - and praises him on hiding himself so well as a butler.
Grell loves the praise and finally reveals himself, undoing the ribbon that holds his hair back, taking off his rounded glasses, and combs out the black hair dye in the falling rain from the storm to reveal blood red hair. He puts on fake eyelashes, dons a pair of black gloves and replaces the rounded glasses with a pair of red framed ones while he reintroduces himself as the Burnett Estate butler, Grell Sutcliffe. Grell expresses his surprise at seeing a demon acting as a butler, but Sebastian throws back that he's never seen the same with what Grell is: a death god, or shinigami. In the Kuroshitsuji world, death gods are like demi-gods, halfway between God and humans, so Sebastian says they are close to 'gods' in a sense. Sebastian asks why Grell has descended to Earth to commit these crimes and he replies that it must be because he's fallen in love with a 'certain woman.' That woman is, of course, Madam Red.
Ciel explains that since Grell is a death god and, therefore, not human, he and Madam Red are the only people capable of committing the crimes. Only Grell could have slipped past Sebastian and Ciel in a second, and only Grell could have gotten from the Viscount's home in the West End to the scene of the crime in the East end and back in a matter of minutes. No one would have noticed an attendant missing from a social gathering, giving Madam an alibi while Grell was off doing her dirty work. And the victims were all patients at Madam Red's hospital, where they underwent abortions by the Madam's hand. They also died in the order which they received treatment.
Caught by the truth, Madam admits to having killed them, but she refuses to give up and that's when Grell springs into action. He attacks Ciel with a red chainsaw - his deathscythe - and Sebastian is forced to intervene, starting a long battle between the two of them. While Sebastian and Grell are fighting, Ciel faces off against Madam and in a fit, she tries to stab him, only to find that she's unable to hurt her only nephew. Although she stops before actually stabbing him, Sebastian is tied by contract to protect Ciel so he ends up almost losing an arm to Grell in order to attack Madam. Ciel stops him though and while Madam cries about how she can't kill her nephew, Grell is left on his own, and he isn't happy. He asks why Madam won't kill Ciel when she's killed so many women before and when she still refuses to kill her nephew, he kills her by shoving his chainsaw through her chest.
Her life is revealed via Cinematic Record, the main power of all death gods in the Kuroshitsuji universe. Once cut by a deathscythe, the blood turns into film strips that play a person's life back before their eyes and the eyes of a death god, allowing them to decide whether to kill or let live, and whether to send a person to heaven or hell. Grell seems to really enjoy watching people's Cinematic Records, admitting that he does have a bit of a bad habit for peeping at people's pasts. He can't help himself because he likes seeing the dark secrets people hide.
We learn that the reason Madam started killing women was because she had a one-sided love with Ciel's father, who chose her sister over her. Madam eventually married and even conceived a child, but an accident with a carriage killed her husband and robbed her of her child and the ability to bear any other children. Ciel's parents are murdered after that and one day the Madam snaps after giving a prostitute an abortion. She decides that if the woman doesn't want the baby in her womb, then she doesn't deserve to have one and kills her the night after her surgery, ripping out her womb. Grell has apparently been watching Madam for awhile now and decides to help her because he says that they are "alike" in that he wants to have children, too, but because he's male, it's impossible. Together, they turn into the avenging angels of God, going after "ugly" women who destroy the gift that God has given them. Grell goes off the Death List, the predetermined list handed down from God naming those who are supposed to die, in order to help Madam Red with her objective of punishing unworthy women. He enjoys the death and the blood and so his desires line up with the Madam's own quite nicely. However, when Madam refuses to kill Ciel even though he would blow their cover, Grell kills her because he's upset that she would throw all their work away.
After stripping Madam Red of her coat and expressing his dismay at her having become an "ordinary woman" after all the rules he broke for her and all the trouble he went through to help her, he starts to leave. However, Ciel tells Sebastian to capture Jack the Ripper per the Queen's orders and the fight starts anew.
The fight itself showcases how fast and difficult Grell can be as an opponent, but it also shows how very, very weird he is. He spends most of the fight professing his love for Sebastian and the more Sebastian threatens him, the more excited Grell seems to get. He obviously enjoys the fight and takes great pleasure in teasing Sebastian about his infatuation with him, saying that he thinks he could have Sebastian's baby if they tried. Which…Sebastian does not appreciate. They fight until Grell gets a good swipe in at him, cutting Sebastian across the chest. Instead of getting a juicy bit of backstory, he gets a nasty introduction to the banality that Sebastian faces day to day at the Phantomhive manor. Pissed that he didn't get to see the dark details of Sebastian's life, they go at it again, only this time, Sebastian has a plan.
Using his torn jacket, he stops Grell's chainsaw and renders him incapable of fighting. Against a demon's strength, Grell loses easily and is beaten to a pulp. Sebastian then takes the chainsaw and attempts to behead Grell with his own weapon, when Grell's supervisor, William T. Spears, appears and "saves" him. After stopping the beheading though, William beats Grell for having gone against the rules and drags him off to file the appropriate paperwork for the situation. And thereafter, Grell has never been heard from again.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality: Grell is, in the neatest and kindest way to put it, insane. However, how much of that is a show and how much of it is actual delusion is hard to tell. His personality is made of several facets, the first and most prominent being his gender confusion. Grell calls himself a first-rate actress and acts extremely flamboyant, wearing make-up (fake eyelashes and lipstick are mentioned in the series itself, but at that point, he's still trying to 'blend in') and talking about how he had to "resist being fashionable." What this means is unknown, but he later steals Madam Red's coat to wear since she no longer deserves it in his eyes. He pretends to be a female, even though he knows that he's biologically male, and talks frequently about how he wants to bear children, despite knowing that it's physically impossible. He does, however, seem to believe that it's worth a shot and does wish to have children someday. He speaks in a feminine manner, using the Japanese personal pronoun 'atashi' which is feminine, and the sentence endings 'wa' and 'no yo' to make his sentences sound girlish to the Japanese speaking audience.
His delight in the theatre and acting also ties into his love of the playwright, William Shakespeare, and his flamboyancy. He sees himself as Juliet and Sebastian as Romeo because of his one-sided infatuation with the demon butler that can never be actualized since they are, in fact, enemies and trying to kill one another. That doesn't stop him from flirting with Sebastian every chance he gets, though. His affections aren't reserved for Sebastian alone, but for any man or woman who happens to catch his eye. He seems to be rather close to his supervisor, William, and although William tends to call everyone by their full names, he doesn't seem upset by Grell calling him by the nickname, Will. Knowing Grell's personality, it's likely he hits on his supervisor in the same way he hits on Sebastian.
Grell wears his heart on his sleeve and is very honest with his emotions. The main reason he became Jack the Ripper was because he "fell in love" with Madam Red. He loved to see her covered in the blood of her victims and her ruthlessness and hatred of women who gave up their babies while she remained childless struck a chord with him. However, his emotions often get the better of him and if he no longer feels a certain way, he doesn't see the need to keep the object of his affection around. Once Madam Red stops being of interest to him, he kills her even if, as he says, he's disappointed and saddened by the loss of her. His emotions also cloud his judgment and he gets sloppy when fighting if angry or otherwise perturbed.
In all things, Grell's love of a person is tied intimately to his bloodthirsty nature. He says it himself that he loves the color red, the color of blood. Grell loves his job as a death god because it allows him to peek into people's pasts to see all their dirty secrets, and it gives him an excuse to kill. He has no remorse about killing anyone, and often his 'affection' is just a cover for his desire to kill his 'beloved.' Although he does legitimately seem to like Sebastian, he keeps hitting on him precisely because it makes Sebastian uncomfortable and Grell loves to see people squirm before they die.
And while Grell is a formidable opponent, he's also a giant spaz. Even when Sebastian is threatening him with death, he responds by saying that the fear he feels just makes him want Sebastian's babies even more. He is extremely vain and freaks out if anyone tries to hit him in the face. He is also easily defeated once Sebastian stops his chainsaw because he's too distracted by it being broken to fight back. He's heavily reliant on his weapon and without it, he's rather ineffectual.
Grell's love of acting also means he has another part to his personality that must be taken into account. When dressed up as the butler, he is bumbling, easily flustered and confused, directionally challenged and generally a poor excuse for a butler. He spends most of his time apologizing or ineffectually calming down Madam Red when she rants against Lau or other characters in the series. Grell is shown to be an extremely adaptable character, fitting his role and personality to the people around him. He needed to escape notice, so he did all he could to remain quietly in the background. He is capable of being subtle, but when acting like himself, he doesn't see a need to do so.
Please give us a detailed physical description of your character: Grell stands at an average height, probably around 5'7 or so and is thin without looking frail. In his proper form, he has long, blood red hair down to about his upper thighs and brilliant green eyes behind a pair of red rimmed glasses. The glasses have a chain of small beads leading up to a small approximately one to two centimeter big skull bead on each side where the chain connects to the glasses themselves. Although he spends most of the series in his butler uniform (reddish brown vest over dark pants, white stand collar shirt with a white and red striped ribbon tie), he's also seen wearing a straight-laced black suit for when he was working as an actual death god dispatch officer. He later takes Madam Red's bloodstained coat for himself, which is a red woman's tailed coat with a black bow in back and black piping around the sleeves and hems. As a death god, he leaves his hair down and wears a pair of black gloves. No matter what he's wearing, though, he has a pair of high heeled red and black Victorian ankle boots on his feet.
He's extremely feminine because he wishes to look that way, sporting fake eyelashes in the series and mentioning that he wears lipstick when not at work. He tends to stand with his hips at a jaunt and likes smiling wide to show off his pearly whites - which are also sharp like knives. One special feature about his appearance is his penchant for holding his hands with thumb, first finger and pinky extended (like a rock star?).
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's?: I'll be taking him from a point after he's lost to Sebastian and has been dragged off by William to write his explanations and apologies. It's assumed that he's been taken back to Headquarters and it'll be just after he's arrived there.
What kinds of magical/special/crazy powers does your character have, if any?: In short, Grell is a death god and while his powers aren't fully outlined in the story, we get a pretty good idea of what he's capable of. Since he's able to get across an entire city in a second, Grell is extremely fast - probably impossibly fast. He's able to get in and out of places without people seeing as evidenced by the fact that he's able to get past Sebastian and Ciel while they're watching for Jack the Ripper. Grell is also stronger than the average human, able to go head to head with a demon. He's also capable of pulling his deathscythe - a red customized chainsaw - out of nowhere, and wields it with ease. He probably has some sort of healing power since Will had no qualms about stepping on his head and beating him up before dragging him off by his hair. I'd say that his stamina is pretty good seeing how long he can swing the chainsaw around and how long he's able to fight.
Death gods are equaled to 'gods' in that they serve as the middle men between God and mortals. Their job is to judge dying mortals, separate their souls from their bodies and send them to either heaven or hell. To judge their victims, they use a skill called "Cinematic Record" in which the death god cuts their victim and the blood spilled plays out like a film strip, playing back the person's life. It appears that death gods can pick and choose the most important parts of a person's life, in order to accurately judge their deeds, but it doesn't always work as planned (example, when Sebastian plays back a different part of his life).
If present, how do you plan to tweak those powers to make him/her appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's?: The speed and strength will be reduced to slightly faster/stronger than average, but nothing more. He won't have his chainsaw either, so his ability to perform Cinematic Record is also pretty much gone. Unless he's magically able to get his deathscythe back, his ability is sealed. He'll keep his agility, but without his speed, it's pretty much that he'll just be able to avoid a blow as well as any fighter would. Healing won't be anything beyond normal human capabilities.
Does your character have any other non-magical skills or abilities that we should know about?: He's amazing at acting and he's one hell of a drag queen.
How about improbable appendages?: Nothing beside the Magically Appearing Chainsaw that he won't have anymore. Also, perhaps, the Death List which has everyone's name written on it and when they die. He won't have that anymore either.
Third-Person Sample:
It had taken awhile to get used to being human the first time and that had just been a farce - no real humanity involved. Now, he was forced to play the role twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks a year. Unlike the theatre, there was no off season and no breaks. He was stuck in a role he didn't wish to play.
And all because of some stupid little rule breaking. ...or something.
Sitting on his bed in a poor excuse for a hospital room, Grell discovered that things weren't quite so interesting in the human world when he couldn't leave it anytime he wanted. The clothes were drab and he wasn't allowed makeup and he was surrounded by ugly women who couldn't hold his interest if he made them beg for their pathetic lives. The foul nurses even suggested cutting his hair to help him "rehabilitate," whatever that was supposed to mean. Grell didn't need to rehabilitate. He needed to be non-human and have access to his deathscythe again so he could rip the stupid smiles off their repulsive faces. The death god smiled at the thought of taking a scalpel to those very same smiles; slitting the skin back to the ears so they could never stop and laughing as a cohort (oh, how he missed the Madam!) tore their frail, disgusting bodies apart.
But he couldn't do anything now. He was stuck in his room after throwing a fit in the showers when a nurse tried to get him to stop hitting on the rather attractive man next to him. It wasn't Grell's fault the man had beautiful red hair that just happened to attract his attention. It also wasn't his fault that the man had the same feel as home. He'd only gone over to ask him where Will was and how to get out of this shithole, but no. Noooo, the nurse got all uppity and threw him in his room for the remainder of the shift. Honestly. A wandering hand wasn't that bad.
Sighing, Grell flopped over on the bed that he refused to call his own and twirled a strand of damp red hair around his finger. Other than that redhead, he hadn't met anyone who made his heart sing like the Madam or that darling butler had. He was bored and boredom never suited him well. It usually meant someone needed to die. Yet try as he might to call his baby to him, the chainsaw wouldn't come and the effort left him tired and dealing with a dull headache. If he just stayed here, Will would come for him. He was technically shirking his duties and the Death List had to be piling up, meaning paperwork needed to be filed and Will did so love paperwork. All he had to do was wait and then Will would come for him....and likely kick his face in for having gone missing.
Waiting was not an option.
Getting up, Grell headed over to the door, pulling on the knob before kicking the door hard. "WILLIAM. IF THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF A JOKE, SO HELP ME, I'LL REAP WHATEVER SOUL YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY SOLD TO THAT STUPID BOOK OF YOURS!" When he wasn't immediately beaten to a bloody pulp, he groaned and pressed his forehead against the door. What was he going to do? He had a heartbeat and he couldn't just whisk himself out of here. His baby wasn't coming when he called it and, worse yet, he didn't have his makeup kit with him. Scratching his nails down the door, Grell turned his options over in his head and decided that killing everyone until they let him out probably wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. A different tactic would be required.
Smiling suddenly, he realized exactly what he needed to do. The best way to get out of prison was to be a model citizen, right? Grell stepped back and waited until he heard a nurse passing by, and then he gently rapped on the door and called out to her in the sweetest voice he could manage. "I'm terribly sorry for my outlandish behavior earlier and I promise I won't do it again. Might I get you to let me out now? I'm ready to behave."
"If you promise, Geoffrey, I can let you out," the nurse dutifully responded.
Grell smirked and clasped his hands behind his back. He was an actress after all and this would be the greatest act the world had ever seen. He just had to bide his time until he could destroy this place and every single person in it. "I promise, ma'am. I'll be on my best behavior. My very best."