💀 Player Information Name: patina
Age: 35
Contact: Annys53 on plurk
Characters In-game: None
💀 Character Information Name: Merton Dingle
Canon: Big Wolf on Campus
Canon Point: After dying during the last episode
Age: 19
Description: Merton's a 5'7 chalky-skinned ginger who dyes his hair black and spikes it. His sense of style has been described as "budget goth." He talks with his hands and moves in a way that suggests he's had too much coffee.
Physical changes: eventually he may gain a lizard tongue. But not yet.
Powers: baseline human. He is capable of magic, but his canon implies that the magic was mostly based on powerful words or talismans or whatever. He did manage to will his imaginary friend into being real when he was a child, but there was probably some kind of magical item involved.
History: Merton grew up in the sleepy little town of Pleasantville with a perfectly nice family and a little sister named Becky. He had few friends growing up. Even his sister, after the age of six considered him embarrassing. That's probably why he developed an intense focus on his imaginary friend, Vince. He actually managed to bring him to life, but Vince turned out to be horribly manipulative and possessive, so Merton locked him in a trunk and convinced himself for years that the whole thing had been only his imagination.
Until high school his life was pretty uneventful. He thought he saw Bigfoot once and he constantly stayed on alert hoping and praying for something, anything weird to happen. Finally, in high school when he accused a football player of being a werewolf, his life started to get
really interesting.
Tommy the quarterback and Merton started encountering a vast amount of sheer weirdness including monsters, killers, mad scientists, and alternate dimensions. At one point, a girl at their school named Lori noticed Tommy was a werewolf and made friends with both Tommy and Merton, helping them fight.
Then there was The Evil Werewolf Syndicate, a very aptly named group until Tommy defeated them. After that, the new leader decided they should be about community service and helping others. Too bad Merton decided to send a werewolf-eating vampire after them because he didn't want to stake her. All of the Syndicate died, except the leader, Gil. Merton never told anyone about that.
Finally, just before Senior Prom, a girl named Sloan started flirting with Merton. It turned out she was a succubus and she wanted to use Merton's life as blackmail to get Tommy to turn himself over Gil. Merton tried to possess Sloan to get his body back, but before he could do that he got taken in by a Reaper.
Hell Status: do the limbo
What Brings Them To Hell: Merton's generally a good-hearted sort, but while dabbling in occultism, he made the rookie error of signing a contract without reading the fine print and inadvertently selling his soul to satan. (Well, "Stan". There was a misprint.) It's not likely the document will stand up in court*, but apparently it was just confusing enough to help land him in Limbo. More serious charges include the time he brought Lori's boyfriend back to life as a zombie. Or when he distracted a Reaper from his duties by drawing him into a few games of Parcheesi, Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. Or it could be about that time he caused a group of harmless werewolves to die. But he had a good reason for that! Not wanting to see his friend get killed or stake an attractive vampire was a good reason, right?
He'll be fine. Maybe.
The Pitch: What's hell without amateur theater? Merton's here for that! He's endlessly expressive and doesn't really grasp the true meaning of "tone it down." So, in a way, he'll be assisting in making hell more of a torment for those who hate silliness. Helpful. His obliviousness to "normal" has made it hard for him to make friends at school. Worse, feeling rejected has contributed to his loudness and made him more attention seeking than he might have been otherwise. The desperation can be kind of offputting. But he does deeply value people who are willing to put up with it and stand by him. He'll do his best to help them out and cheer them up. He doesn't like going into physical danger, but he will, if he has to, reluctantly. At least if his friends can't defend themselves.
There's also the fun of tossing a nervous horror buff into the abyss, watching him struggle with being simultaneously terrified and fascinated by everything around him. He's deeply intrigued by the morbid and disturbing but doesn't always do so well with actual danger. Although he's got some experience with things that want to dismember him, this should be a new level of hell.
Then there's the matter of his wild imagination. Merton's not someone to dismiss the improbable: he thought his neighbor's dog might be possessed before he even knew for certain that monsters existed in his world. He usually has a plan or two going to deal with the bizarre situations he imagines. Come watch the gears in his head turn as he tries to find some way to outwit Hell bureaucracy and speed up Limbo. He probably won't find it but it should be entertaining. Thrill as he struggles to get a not-guilty verdict and to figure out exactly what happened to his Earth friends.
Setting Fit: He might eventually get to join Brimstone Entertainment. But until he gets a break he'll probably need to join Hell's retailers and work in a shop or restaurant. Surveillance might be another option if that means he has the chance to see his friends again. Of course, Reaping would seem to be the obvious choice for anyone who wants out of Hell, but he may not do well there. No one wants a Reaper who could be talked out of taking a soul.
As I mentioned, he has a wild imagination. In Hell the possibilities are endless! Also likely to be really unpleasant! He'll be a little more paranoid than usual. That won't stop him from being fascinated by people from other worlds and (mun-willing) fanboying over characters he knows. He's a terrible judge of character when it comes to girls in general or just about anyone willing to pay attention to him so he'll probably run into some trouble that way as well.
Merton's going to be wondering about the reason for his Limbo assignment. He occasionally betrayed his best friend while under extreme stress. Nothing ever came of it, he heel-face turned right back immediately afterwards and was quickly forgiven, but the guilt will haunt him and he'll and wonder if he's actually here for treachery and cowardice. There won't be too much angst though. He'll be too busy working out his defense for his trial and trying to find out what happened to his friends.
After a while, he may begin to wonder if he really
wants to go to heaven, depending on what the angelic emissaries he encounters are like. He's going to grow a lot more comfortable with danger given enough time. Whether he'll make hell a (very very,
very slightly) nicer place or hell will make him a worse person remains to be seen.
Samples: FortanonBakerstreet New MuseSome starters*
[The demon told him that he was signing for a package from Amazon.][Notes: The "selling his soul to Stan" thing isn't official canon, but it's in character and there's no canon to say he
didn't.]
