application
PLAYER
✧ NAME: Audrey.
✧ LJ USERNAME: ignipotent
✧ CONTACT (EMAIL, AIM, MSN, PLURK, ETC.): aeloriax [at] gmail.com
✧ CURRENT MUSE LIST: None.
CHARACTER
✧ NAME: Benjamin Kronh Hawkins
✧ SERIES: Carnivàle
✧ HISTORY:
♣ mythology
♣ series info
Here's some pre-canon info summarized from original pitch documents by the series' creator:
In 1916, Benjamin John Hakwins was born on a farm in Milfay, Oklahoma to Henry Scudder and Flora Hawkins. Scudder abandoned the family while Ben was still a baby, leaving him to the care of a 'goddamn crazy woman' (to quote Ben). After her son's birth, she began to believe that her husband was in league with the devil and that her son was the anti-christ. The mother of an Avatar will inevitably suffer trauma at his birth, most often manifesting in insanity. In no way helping her condition, Ben began to display healing powers as a child. One night, he dug up his dead cat and accidentally resurrected the creature midst adamant refusal to hand over the corpse. This miracle set a spark to Flora's religious fervor, and from that point on, she refused to touch her son, believing, with all certitude, that he was marked by the devil. For days on end, she would often subject him to vitriolic rants underlined by scripture readings.
Healing or reviving a life, animal or human, also requires a price: life for life. All the crops on their farm withered in exchange for that cat's life, sending the already struggling family into abject poverty. This would only be exacerbated by the Great Depression in 1929.
Perhaps motivated by poverty and Flora's treatment, Ben left the farm at 16 and headed to Houston, Texas, where he became involved in a life of petty theft and burglary. As a result of a failed bank robbery, Ben was convicted and given a 20-year prison-farm sentence. However, he wasn't there for long. Word from a neighbor informed him that his mother was dying, and desperate to see her, Ben managed to escape. It wasn't as easy as stated. Unable to secure a release, Ben reacted with belligerence and was placed into solitary confinement as a result. Pressed to the edge, he switched gears and found efficacy in playing dog. Ben stuck to the rules, and acted like the teacher's pet in a third grade class. Demeaning as it was, he was rewarded with an invitation to accompany a guard to the nearby town for a gravel run. Ben took the opportunity to take over the wheel, only to have the guard turn a gun on him. In desperation, he took the guard's gun and killed him.
Immediately following the murder, Ben drove the car down to Milfay. Soon, he would find himself picked up by the Carnivàle after his mother's death. In the middle of burying his mother, actually.
✧ TIMELINE: mid-canon, near the end.
✧ PERSONALITY:
Upon meeting Ben Hawkins, you wouldn't think he's a nice person. In the beginning of the series, he was downright aggressive whenever someone ventured to question him beyond surface-level conversation. Nowadays, he's just not that keen on talking a lot. He doesn't tell many jokes, and has an even harder time taking them. If he becomes the butt of a joke, he'll likely react with hostility or stew far longer than necessary. However, he has shown to relax overtime as he gets used to his surroundings.
He's also the representation of God's light.
... Yeah.
You would think that would make you a saint. Someone all-good and holy, spreading the word of God and Love. Ben actually seems happy at the prospect of never reading another page of scripture again. His mother has soured religion for him, and never through the course of the series do we see him pray or address God in any manner. Nevertheless, he's upheld by a strong moral compass that's mediated not by religion, but by intrinsic virtue. In the first episode, he helps a woman, who refuses to bury the dead baby in her arms, accept the death of her child with gentle coercing. In another episode, he offers money to a family stranded on the road. In another, he nearly attacks a man who has his disabled daughter prostitute, and gives him money on the condition that the incident never occurs again. Not to mention, he feels guilt and shame after bedding with a married woman (even if the husband appears to be dead.) These are just a few examples, but generally, Ben Hawkins does seem to follow line of morality. An avatar of light will always have a base nature of goodness, and it's human will that gives him leeway. And it's not that Ben Hawkins doesn't believe in God, for he certainly does. When Lodz claims that he made the duststorm stop, he argues that only God has the power to do that; similarly, when Management tells him he must choose a life to sacrifice to save Ruthie, he reacts by saying it's not his place, it's God's place to choose who lives and dies. His relationship with God is undeniably there, but it's an extremely complicated one by nature of who he is, what he's experienced, and what he's done.
It seems like a contradiction that Ben Hawkins, avatar of God's light, should be a murderer. This goes back to his tendency to be reactive. He does stupid things when he's emotionally charged, including picking fights or even killing someone. When he finds out that Lodz killed Ruthie, his immediate reaction is to strangle him. We can assume this is what happened when the guard pulled his gun on him. He doesn't exactly think when pushed into a corner, but reacts on impulse. It's only after the deed's done that he finds rationality. After finding out that Ruthie had slept with his father, he approached her in anger, and ended up breaking her son's arm when he tried to hold him back. He approaches him afterward and apologies, even healing hm. Guilt's a big thing for Ben: guilt for not healing his mother, guilt for killing the guard, guilt for sleeping with a married woman, &c. It's part of why he's conflicted in his role as Avatar. It's Ben's duty to go out and kill the Usher, the avatar of darkness destined to bring about the apocalypse, but he struggles throughout the series to avoid his role. He's not a saint, hardly an angel, only a man who's murdered and sinned. He's definitely a reluctant hero, and only accepts his duty whole-halfheartedly when he realizes there's no way out. With Management dead, and his power passed to him, Ben's the only who can stop the Usher. It should be noted that Good and Evil aren't contrasted starkly in the series, anyway. Even the side of 'good,' must manipulate and kill in order to achieve an ultimate end of good. Ben, too, manipulates in order to fulfill his duty, though in smaller motions than management.
As mentioned before, Ben Hawkins is taciturn, but compassion does underline his personality. Rarely will he offer much comfort verbally, perhaps because he doesn't know what to say. He's more likely to show compassion through action. He'll help those who need help, for instance, rescuing Jonesy even when under a crucial deadline to find his father. When Sofie asks him to stay with him while she sleeps, he obliges. And when he observes how unsettled she is, he dances with her to loosen her nerves.
In Sophie's case, it helps that he's in love with her. And as seen through the sacrifices he took to revive Ruthie, it's obvious that he will go to extreme ends to help the people to whom he's attached. Romantically, he's not like your normal teenager. He doesn't react to sexual stimuli, as other nineteen year old boys might. Even when one of the cooch dancers describes her tits to him, he hardly reacts. Even as he watches the cooch (burlesque) show, he doesn't seem to look at the naked women as the other men in the crowd ogle them. He's got other (more important) things on his man.
The fact that he is a nineteen year old boy is important. Given his experiences and the times, nineteen isn't as young as we'd picture a nineteen year-old in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, Ben Hawkins is still young. He's still trying to figure out who the hell he is and what the hell he is, and what all that means in terms of his destiny.
✧ ABILITIES/POWERS:
Ben's powers are a result of being an Avatar.
Ben can heal: flesh wounds, broken bones, diseases, brain damage, you name it. Technically, Ben can move life from one organism to another, whether it be a field of crops for healing paralysis or a flock of vultures for healing someone's burned body. Generally, it seems that the more complex the organism, the more sacrifices he needs - but the sacrifice / healing ratio is... not very consistent. Healing his father's burned face, for example, drains life force from people in a hotel lobby and pedestrians immediately outside the hotel. They get sick and faint, but it's only the hotel owner (closest to him) who dies of an already weak heart. It takes the lives of a whole lake of fish to heal a broken arm, but only a flock of maybe 10 vultures to heal someone covered with third-degree burns. At this point in canon, he's grown adept enough to specifically target life to drain and transfer. He can use it offensively by healing someone with a specific sacrifice in mind, draining from the target's life force and thus injuring him.
Human life, on the other hand, is always constant in price. A life for a life, and that sacrificed life most be taken by Ben's own hands. By this, I mean that he must kill someone to use their life, or if the sacrifice is already dying, he must choose this person to surrender her life. Animals seem to be exempt from the life rule, and require a sacrifice more along the lines of healing.
On a blue moon, and if the emotion's strong enough, an avatar can bring back to life a person they love without a sacrifice. This occurs in canon only once, though it's not Ben's character who does it.
Ben is also subject to visions of the past, present and future. He sees them in his dreams, in response to touching and object, or even when he's just walking across room. They're spontaneous. Ben also has the potential for telekinesis.
EDIT// Sorry! I was reviewing some episodes today and realized I forget something. There is actually one instance in the story where Ben controls a 'vision'. Basically, he locates a person miles away and observes the landscape through his perspective. He has very rudimentary control of this, as it occurs only once in the show. He doesn't seem to be able to do it under pressure, either. At least not at this point.
Ben has displayed other powers, but these are extremely sporadic and if they ever manifested, would require mod approval. (Very) rudimentary control of the world, essentially. He displays this only once when Professor Lodz antagonizes him, raising guilt in regards to his mother's death. This essentially culminates in a screaming fit that stops a dust-storm momentarily, and starts it over again once he loses control. He exhibits this only once in the series, and not even when he needs it the most.
EDIT// he also seems to have the potential to hide things in hammerspace? I don't know if he's that adept at it, as he was only accessing a trailer his predecessor slipped between the folds of reality.
✧ TIME OF ARRIVAL: Day.
✧ MASK DESIGN: White and as simple as can be.
✧ PLACE OF SOLACE: The carnivale. All the buildings are there, but the carnies are missing.
SAMPLES
✧ FIRST PERSON: ~ an example
✧ THIRD PERSON:
The metal blade feels like ice against his throat, and the seconds only seem to temper the blade colder. Ma had always said that you’d go for hell for this, not that he wasn’t going to hell already. You kill a man-what circle is that? The seventh, the fifth? What about suicide? Does the devil choose your worst sin and tie you to that circle, or do you get to try all of them?
The thoughts jump across his mind like jumbled fleas, and he still can feel that blade pressing colder and colder. His grip refuses to shake. A life for a life, that's what Management said. The only way to bring Ruthie back was to play God, or as Management would put it, be the God he is.
Killing a man?
He's done it before. Hadn't thought he was capable, not until the prison guard's blood had run red against the car seat. Blood of a man he hadn't meant to kill, trapped in the cracks of his palms as he tried to stop the flow of the gunshot wound.
But here, he had to methodically kill a man. Ben had to look him in the eyes and say, your life is worth nothing- it's only currency for hers. You couldn't wash something out like that, no matter how much you scrubbed your hands.
Earlier, Ben had found a man, drunk and destitute, in one of the local bars. No one would have missed this barfly. He was a transient. In the alleyway, he slammed the drunkard against the wall. He brought his hands against the man's throat and failed, foreign tongues of Spanish falling deaf to his ears as he walked away.
If you have to die and there's no one to bury you, then a graveyard's the closest thing you've got. God will see you, even if he shakes his head and chooses not to take you. That's Ben's reasoning anyway, that's why he's here, with a knife pressed against his throat and his back against a tombstone. A life for a woman's life, Ruthie's life: that's what Management said. Truth be told, he hadn't even known Ruthie for long. But Ruthie was a good woman, a better person than he'd ever hope to be. A life for a life.
Why not his own?
Ben wonders what the guard had felt when he was dying. During that precipice between life and death, what had he seen? Angels? A tunnel of light? He heard people did, but that always seemed like bullshit. Probably a nice thought to make even death seem sweet. But if that was how it went, what would he see? His mother?
A life for a life, that’s what Management said.
He presses the cold knife against his throat and slices through the flesh.
✧ NAME: Audrey.
✧ LJ USERNAME: ignipotent
✧ CONTACT (EMAIL, AIM, MSN, PLURK, ETC.): aeloriax [at] gmail.com
✧ CURRENT MUSE LIST: None.
CHARACTER
✧ NAME: Benjamin Kronh Hawkins
✧ SERIES: Carnivàle
✧ HISTORY:
♣ mythology
♣ series info
Here's some pre-canon info summarized from original pitch documents by the series' creator:
In 1916, Benjamin John Hakwins was born on a farm in Milfay, Oklahoma to Henry Scudder and Flora Hawkins. Scudder abandoned the family while Ben was still a baby, leaving him to the care of a 'goddamn crazy woman' (to quote Ben). After her son's birth, she began to believe that her husband was in league with the devil and that her son was the anti-christ. The mother of an Avatar will inevitably suffer trauma at his birth, most often manifesting in insanity. In no way helping her condition, Ben began to display healing powers as a child. One night, he dug up his dead cat and accidentally resurrected the creature midst adamant refusal to hand over the corpse. This miracle set a spark to Flora's religious fervor, and from that point on, she refused to touch her son, believing, with all certitude, that he was marked by the devil. For days on end, she would often subject him to vitriolic rants underlined by scripture readings.
Healing or reviving a life, animal or human, also requires a price: life for life. All the crops on their farm withered in exchange for that cat's life, sending the already struggling family into abject poverty. This would only be exacerbated by the Great Depression in 1929.
Perhaps motivated by poverty and Flora's treatment, Ben left the farm at 16 and headed to Houston, Texas, where he became involved in a life of petty theft and burglary. As a result of a failed bank robbery, Ben was convicted and given a 20-year prison-farm sentence. However, he wasn't there for long. Word from a neighbor informed him that his mother was dying, and desperate to see her, Ben managed to escape. It wasn't as easy as stated. Unable to secure a release, Ben reacted with belligerence and was placed into solitary confinement as a result. Pressed to the edge, he switched gears and found efficacy in playing dog. Ben stuck to the rules, and acted like the teacher's pet in a third grade class. Demeaning as it was, he was rewarded with an invitation to accompany a guard to the nearby town for a gravel run. Ben took the opportunity to take over the wheel, only to have the guard turn a gun on him. In desperation, he took the guard's gun and killed him.
Immediately following the murder, Ben drove the car down to Milfay. Soon, he would find himself picked up by the Carnivàle after his mother's death. In the middle of burying his mother, actually.
✧ TIMELINE: mid-canon, near the end.
✧ PERSONALITY:
Upon meeting Ben Hawkins, you wouldn't think he's a nice person. In the beginning of the series, he was downright aggressive whenever someone ventured to question him beyond surface-level conversation. Nowadays, he's just not that keen on talking a lot. He doesn't tell many jokes, and has an even harder time taking them. If he becomes the butt of a joke, he'll likely react with hostility or stew far longer than necessary. However, he has shown to relax overtime as he gets used to his surroundings.
He's also the representation of God's light.
... Yeah.
You would think that would make you a saint. Someone all-good and holy, spreading the word of God and Love. Ben actually seems happy at the prospect of never reading another page of scripture again. His mother has soured religion for him, and never through the course of the series do we see him pray or address God in any manner. Nevertheless, he's upheld by a strong moral compass that's mediated not by religion, but by intrinsic virtue. In the first episode, he helps a woman, who refuses to bury the dead baby in her arms, accept the death of her child with gentle coercing. In another episode, he offers money to a family stranded on the road. In another, he nearly attacks a man who has his disabled daughter prostitute, and gives him money on the condition that the incident never occurs again. Not to mention, he feels guilt and shame after bedding with a married woman (even if the husband appears to be dead.) These are just a few examples, but generally, Ben Hawkins does seem to follow line of morality. An avatar of light will always have a base nature of goodness, and it's human will that gives him leeway. And it's not that Ben Hawkins doesn't believe in God, for he certainly does. When Lodz claims that he made the duststorm stop, he argues that only God has the power to do that; similarly, when Management tells him he must choose a life to sacrifice to save Ruthie, he reacts by saying it's not his place, it's God's place to choose who lives and dies. His relationship with God is undeniably there, but it's an extremely complicated one by nature of who he is, what he's experienced, and what he's done.
It seems like a contradiction that Ben Hawkins, avatar of God's light, should be a murderer. This goes back to his tendency to be reactive. He does stupid things when he's emotionally charged, including picking fights or even killing someone. When he finds out that Lodz killed Ruthie, his immediate reaction is to strangle him. We can assume this is what happened when the guard pulled his gun on him. He doesn't exactly think when pushed into a corner, but reacts on impulse. It's only after the deed's done that he finds rationality. After finding out that Ruthie had slept with his father, he approached her in anger, and ended up breaking her son's arm when he tried to hold him back. He approaches him afterward and apologies, even healing hm. Guilt's a big thing for Ben: guilt for not healing his mother, guilt for killing the guard, guilt for sleeping with a married woman, &c. It's part of why he's conflicted in his role as Avatar. It's Ben's duty to go out and kill the Usher, the avatar of darkness destined to bring about the apocalypse, but he struggles throughout the series to avoid his role. He's not a saint, hardly an angel, only a man who's murdered and sinned. He's definitely a reluctant hero, and only accepts his duty whole-halfheartedly when he realizes there's no way out. With Management dead, and his power passed to him, Ben's the only who can stop the Usher. It should be noted that Good and Evil aren't contrasted starkly in the series, anyway. Even the side of 'good,' must manipulate and kill in order to achieve an ultimate end of good. Ben, too, manipulates in order to fulfill his duty, though in smaller motions than management.
As mentioned before, Ben Hawkins is taciturn, but compassion does underline his personality. Rarely will he offer much comfort verbally, perhaps because he doesn't know what to say. He's more likely to show compassion through action. He'll help those who need help, for instance, rescuing Jonesy even when under a crucial deadline to find his father. When Sofie asks him to stay with him while she sleeps, he obliges. And when he observes how unsettled she is, he dances with her to loosen her nerves.
In Sophie's case, it helps that he's in love with her. And as seen through the sacrifices he took to revive Ruthie, it's obvious that he will go to extreme ends to help the people to whom he's attached. Romantically, he's not like your normal teenager. He doesn't react to sexual stimuli, as other nineteen year old boys might. Even when one of the cooch dancers describes her tits to him, he hardly reacts. Even as he watches the cooch (burlesque) show, he doesn't seem to look at the naked women as the other men in the crowd ogle them. He's got other (more important) things on his man.
The fact that he is a nineteen year old boy is important. Given his experiences and the times, nineteen isn't as young as we'd picture a nineteen year-old in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, Ben Hawkins is still young. He's still trying to figure out who the hell he is and what the hell he is, and what all that means in terms of his destiny.
✧ ABILITIES/POWERS:
Ben's powers are a result of being an Avatar.
Ben can heal: flesh wounds, broken bones, diseases, brain damage, you name it. Technically, Ben can move life from one organism to another, whether it be a field of crops for healing paralysis or a flock of vultures for healing someone's burned body. Generally, it seems that the more complex the organism, the more sacrifices he needs - but the sacrifice / healing ratio is... not very consistent. Healing his father's burned face, for example, drains life force from people in a hotel lobby and pedestrians immediately outside the hotel. They get sick and faint, but it's only the hotel owner (closest to him) who dies of an already weak heart. It takes the lives of a whole lake of fish to heal a broken arm, but only a flock of maybe 10 vultures to heal someone covered with third-degree burns. At this point in canon, he's grown adept enough to specifically target life to drain and transfer. He can use it offensively by healing someone with a specific sacrifice in mind, draining from the target's life force and thus injuring him.
Human life, on the other hand, is always constant in price. A life for a life, and that sacrificed life most be taken by Ben's own hands. By this, I mean that he must kill someone to use their life, or if the sacrifice is already dying, he must choose this person to surrender her life. Animals seem to be exempt from the life rule, and require a sacrifice more along the lines of healing.
On a blue moon, and if the emotion's strong enough, an avatar can bring back to life a person they love without a sacrifice. This occurs in canon only once, though it's not Ben's character who does it.
Ben is also subject to visions of the past, present and future. He sees them in his dreams, in response to touching and object, or even when he's just walking across room. They're spontaneous. Ben also has the potential for telekinesis.
EDIT// Sorry! I was reviewing some episodes today and realized I forget something. There is actually one instance in the story where Ben controls a 'vision'. Basically, he locates a person miles away and observes the landscape through his perspective. He has very rudimentary control of this, as it occurs only once in the show. He doesn't seem to be able to do it under pressure, either. At least not at this point.
Ben has displayed other powers, but these are extremely sporadic and if they ever manifested, would require mod approval. (Very) rudimentary control of the world, essentially. He displays this only once when Professor Lodz antagonizes him, raising guilt in regards to his mother's death. This essentially culminates in a screaming fit that stops a dust-storm momentarily, and starts it over again once he loses control. He exhibits this only once in the series, and not even when he needs it the most.
EDIT// he also seems to have the potential to hide things in hammerspace? I don't know if he's that adept at it, as he was only accessing a trailer his predecessor slipped between the folds of reality.
✧ TIME OF ARRIVAL: Day.
✧ MASK DESIGN: White and as simple as can be.
✧ PLACE OF SOLACE: The carnivale. All the buildings are there, but the carnies are missing.
SAMPLES
✧ FIRST PERSON: ~ an example
✧ THIRD PERSON:
The metal blade feels like ice against his throat, and the seconds only seem to temper the blade colder. Ma had always said that you’d go for hell for this, not that he wasn’t going to hell already. You kill a man-what circle is that? The seventh, the fifth? What about suicide? Does the devil choose your worst sin and tie you to that circle, or do you get to try all of them?
The thoughts jump across his mind like jumbled fleas, and he still can feel that blade pressing colder and colder. His grip refuses to shake. A life for a life, that's what Management said. The only way to bring Ruthie back was to play God, or as Management would put it, be the God he is.
Killing a man?
He's done it before. Hadn't thought he was capable, not until the prison guard's blood had run red against the car seat. Blood of a man he hadn't meant to kill, trapped in the cracks of his palms as he tried to stop the flow of the gunshot wound.
But here, he had to methodically kill a man. Ben had to look him in the eyes and say, your life is worth nothing- it's only currency for hers. You couldn't wash something out like that, no matter how much you scrubbed your hands.
Earlier, Ben had found a man, drunk and destitute, in one of the local bars. No one would have missed this barfly. He was a transient. In the alleyway, he slammed the drunkard against the wall. He brought his hands against the man's throat and failed, foreign tongues of Spanish falling deaf to his ears as he walked away.
If you have to die and there's no one to bury you, then a graveyard's the closest thing you've got. God will see you, even if he shakes his head and chooses not to take you. That's Ben's reasoning anyway, that's why he's here, with a knife pressed against his throat and his back against a tombstone. A life for a woman's life, Ruthie's life: that's what Management said. Truth be told, he hadn't even known Ruthie for long. But Ruthie was a good woman, a better person than he'd ever hope to be. A life for a life.
Why not his own?
Ben wonders what the guard had felt when he was dying. During that precipice between life and death, what had he seen? Angels? A tunnel of light? He heard people did, but that always seemed like bullshit. Probably a nice thought to make even death seem sweet. But if that was how it went, what would he see? His mother?
A life for a life, that’s what Management said.
He presses the cold knife against his throat and slices through the flesh.