Application
Player Information
Name: Mira
Personal Journal: lady_saru365
Contact Info: AIM: opposingsaints37 Plurk: lady_saru
Other Characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Grell Sutcliffe
Source Canon: Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler, manga
Age: Unknown, though physically she looks around anywhere from 25 to 28.
Role In Canon: Antagonist of the first major arc
Justification: N/A
History: London, late 1888: The time of the London social season, beloved by all who attend it. It is also the time of Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who was never found. The time that Grell Sutcliffe came to the human world to bestow havoc on England.
Grell was one of the Grim Reapers, or "gods of death". Her job was merely to transport souls to the realm of the dead and judge whether or not people on her list would be left living or not. But that all changed one night. While going to collect a soul, she witnessed why the person was on her list in the first place: a beautiful red-haired woman was viciously stabbing a prostitute to death and cutting out her uterus. The blood from the murder was all over the human woman, on her hair, clothes and face. The red, being Grell’s favorite color, attracted her, and she carefully listened to the woman’s rage and understood why she did that. The prostitute had been the woman's patient for an abortion, and the woman was twisted with jealousy, wanting to be able to have a child like any other woman. Unfortunately, she couldn't, as she had been in an accident and her uterus had been removed. Watching the prostitutes casually abort their babies had infuriated her, and she couldn't stand it. Grell felt the same longing for a child that could never be, in her own case limited by her physical gender; she sympathized with the woman. She revealed herself to the human, complimented her on a job well done, and offered to help her complete her vengeance.
The woman, whose name was Angelina Barnett (but more popularly known as Madame Red) accepted the offer, and Grell became Madame Red’s butler as her cover. Dying her hair dark, changing her glasses and acting for all intents and purposes male, she was able to create the illusion of a mild-mannered, somewhat incompetent man with no hints to her true identity. She assisted Angelina in her murders, creating alibis for her and breaking the laws of the Reapers to kill the ones they wanted dead. During this time, the murders were attributed to "Jack the Ripper". Then Angelina's nephew Ciel Phantomhive showed up, along with his butler Sebastian. Ciel was ordered by the Queen to solve the Jack murders, and Sebastian was going to help him. For Grell, it was an instant attraction when she saw Sebastian. Though she couldn't reveal her feelings without breaking the disguise, she harbored a secret crush on him.
At a party they all attended, Grell was sent out to go kill another woman. She did so, knowing Ciel's suspicions lay on a certain human, making it easier for her to kill without fear of being caught. After that, there was one more woman left on Madame Red's list. Grell went to go kill the target, but she was surprised on her way out by the appearance of Ciel and Sebastian. They were holding stakeout outside the woman's home, and caught her as he left. She tried to deny it - while still in her role as the incompetent male butler - but it was futile. Abandoning care, she revealed herself as the Reaper she was, admitting she'd been captivated by Madame Red and that was the reason why she helped her. The Madame herself appeared at that moment, intending to take down Ciel. Grell went to take down Sebastian, who quickly stopped her Reaper scythe (which was actually illegally modified into a form like a chainsaw). Ciel ordered Sebastian to capture Grell and Madame Red, but Grell distracted Sebastian from attacking by flirting with Sebastian and making dramatic declarations. Angelina, on the other hand, was just about to kill Ciel when she hesitated, seeing her sister in his face. Grell was set off by watching Angelina falter after killing so many, and easily killed Angelina, expressing her disappointment in Angelina's actions and taking the red coat off her back to wear herself, as the Madame was “no longer fit to wear red.” Grell began to walk away, but Sebastian came after her on Ciel's orders.
They began to fight, with Grell adding some sort of poetic phrase every now and then. Sebastian was extremely put off by Grell's lines, and continued to aim to kill. Grell was genuinely having fun while fighting, dramatizing the combat as similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet. Sebastian being a demon and Grell a Reaper, the comparison fit, except that Sebastian wanted no part of her fantasy. She ended up cutting Sebastian, and wanted to view his memories through the power of Cinematic Record. She was greatly disappointed when she realized that nothing interesting - in her opinion - was appearing, given the fact that Sebastian had been at Phantomhive Manor for the past year. During her distraction, Sebastian somehow recovered and jammed Grell's chainsaw with his coat. Taking advantage of the situation, Sebastian came up to Grell, who was now defenseless, and beat her up severely. After that, he got the coat out of the chainsaw and was about to use it to kill Grell, when someone appeared and stopped him. That person was William T. Spears, a fellow Reaper, and Grell's superior officer sent to collect her and take her back to the Reapers to be punished for her crimes: killing people not meant to be killed yet and using her illegally modified scythe.
[Note: These two links are of the interview in the character book where Grell states she is a woman and desires a sex change. Page 1 of interview, and page 2]
Personality: A first glance of Grell shows a sociable person. She'll easily welcome people into conversation, has no difficulty voicing her opinions, and loves asking questions, especially about others and their views. Grell seems truly interested in what people have to say, especially if it's controversial. Then she adores nothing more then basking in the drama that results, watching emotions in turmoil as one would watch a great movie. Drama in general is a concept she understands well; her clothing, actions, and words calculated to boldly state what's on her mind without giving a second thought to whether it's politically correct. Give her the chance, though, and she'll substitute a literary figure's words for her own.
Fitting with her love of classic literature, Grell tries to be a lady, swearing only in extreme cases, remembering her manners, and the like. She carries herself with grace, takes her responsibilities seriously, and loves traditionally feminine things like flowers, dresses, makeup, etc. Really, she's a girly girl who's not so much a girl as a woman who has seen much but decided to take only the pieces of wisdom she liked from it. One of the things she's near obsessed with is her concept of the beautiful. It could be a simple as a rose blooming, as complex as the mind of a philosopher. She wants to lead a life that is as beautiful as possible...but it's not just the sweet that fits her aesthetic, the macabre and violent hold just as much, if not more appeal, being more theatrical and more likely to invoke higher amounts of emotion.
Grell is very mentally unstable, with moods that change for inexplicable reasons and a penchant for death and blood. With the prostitutes, she saw nothing wrong in brutally slaying them, in fact she loved "making them over" with their blood in murders that seasoned investigators call "abnormal". In the same breath she professes her attraction to Sebastian and her desire to kill him in the bloodiest way possible. Violence isn't the last resort for her, it's the first, with sadomasochistic undertones. She fights for the sake of seeing blood fall, and truthfully she's happiest while murdering. Grell will deliberately go into dangerous situations or provoke them when none exist if she has a good opportunity to do so, but when needed to present a calm picture of sanity, she can restrain the urges enough that killing smaller things or causing some form of destruction holds her off. In game, of course, she’ll likely get into trouble from this.
Being a sort-of immortal, she will be reckless and disregard advice for the sake of alleviating her boredom in a way that pleases her; a perfect scenario would involve copious amounts of drama, energy, and emotion, and all conclude with a death. She'll do a lot simply because it interests her, but she likes best to find a person that takes her complete fascination, and become their friend, even after the initial curiosity is satisfied. Those who get closer to her will find she is a very empathetic person; thinking with her heart instead of her head has given her enough experience to relate to nearly all emotions and try to offer assistance as best she can to the person. Her trust is hard to gain fully, but if you have it, she will prove herself quite loyal and fiercely defend any who speak against her friends until death.
She isn't a liar, per se, but neither is she an honest person. Grell has declared she is an actress, and that's a fair way to describe how she presents herself. Deception, manipulation, veiling the truth, all come naturally, and she tends to be subtle enough in misleading people so that she can pass it off as not her fault. When she truly wishes to act, like making herself Madame Red's butler, she can envelop herself so completely in the role that she could seem an entirely different being than what she is, perhaps making slight faults but overall carrying it off extremely well.
Even with this confidence and energy she throws into her life, Grell doesn't have high self esteem, and is normally expecting rejection and denial. She feels that she is the victim of a mistake by God, her entire life spent wishing that she was a physical woman while having to act as a male. Grell will call herself a woman and use female pronouns such as saying she’s an actress, but it still isn’t easy to reconcile her feelings on herself and the views she gets from society. She still knows she is a woman even while others call her a man or worse to her face. Constantly having to shield herself from these repeated emotional blows, she doesn't expect many, if any, people to understand and accept her for what she is. In fact, it took her a long time to accept herself, being very influenced by those around her that she was some sort of deviant. But as her feelings have stayed, and she knows of historical situations similar to hers, such as the case of the Chevalier d’Eon and the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, she finds the strength to still call herself Miss Sutcliffe and know it to be true.
One of her deepest wishes is to have a child of her own-not by being a father as she technically could do, but to actually bear a child and nurture it as a mother. She understands that it’s physically impossible for her, but it doesn’t stop her from longing and dreaming that she could, one day, be able to give life instead of just taking it. The other great wish of her life is to have a sex change; she says she wants it the most of anything she could do.
[Notes: On the Chevalier-specifically how she lived half of her life as a woman after living half her life as a man and was even recognized as a woman by the King. She was known as such beginning in 1777. On Karl Heinrich Ulrichs-specifically the idea of anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa (female psyche in a male body). That was in 1862. Grell is taken from August 1888, so she could have found these stories and read them.]
Abilities: Physically, Grell has high speed and strength due to being a Reaper, very good reflexes, and excellent endurance. She's capable of holding her own in a fight; as long as her glasses stay on and she has enough room to move, she won't give up.
Her main power is her Scythe, a weapon that she claims can cut anything. Though the validity of that is unknown, the Scythe has been shown to tear up stone and solid metal (with effort) as well as bodies. The Scythe comes with an additional ability called the Cinematic Record, a power which can only be used by the Reapers to judge souls. If someone is cut with the Scythe, their memories will play out like on a film reel. This means that Grell and any other people around are all able to see it. The specific memories witnessed are related to the degree of injury; the worse damage, the farther back it can go. Likewise, if the cut is very shallow and non-life-threatening, then less than a year’s worth of memories are all that appear. Because this is circumstantial, I’m willing to work with each player on a case-by-case basis if this happens.
