The Box Application

[intuitive_aptitude]

Player Information

Are you over 18: Yes

Characters in The Box Already: n/a

Character Information

Character Name: Gabriel Gray a.k.a. Sylar

Canon: Heroes

Canon Point: End of S4E18, “Brave New World”

Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive

History: There’s his Heroes Wiki, but I actually think his Wikipedia Wiki was written better. I’ve also written a short post about Sylar’s turning points that I think are important to his character.

Personality:

Sylar is a dangerous, self-absorbed psychopath with a blatant disregard for humanity. I’m not sure I can stress this any better than: he’s a crazy fuck and he knows it. Sylar is the boogeyman underneath your bed AND the one hiding in your closet. In fact, some days, he likes to just hover outside your window and watch you sleep, because he hasn’t quite decided if he wants to kill you, use you, or just play with you today.

Thirty murders ago, killing bothered Sylar. And I do mean it really bothered him. Still Gabriel Gray at the time, our future-reincarnation-of-evil hung himself out of remorse, but was saved by someone cutting the rope. Now, literally with a swipe of his finger, Sylar can kill, maim, drop, throw, decapitate, you get the idea. With that kind of power at his fingertips, Gabriel has transformed into someone who never needs to learn negotiation skills, or how to play well with other people. Why should he, when he can just force or threaten people into doing what he wants?

And this when we realize how much of a sick bastard he is. Sylar will play nice other people, out of the pure joy he gets from successful deception. He loves taking on the role of someone else — a package delivery man, a helpful neighbor, even an FBI agent — to talk himself into and out of situations. But the con is only as fun as it is believable, and the very moment someone starts to doubt his fake identity, Sylar drops any and all efforts to keep his cover and immediately resorts to flinging people around until they’re unconscious.

Sylar is unstable, reckless, inhumane, and nearly bipolar in his mood swings, moving instantaneously between extremely calm and extremely agitated. This disjointed behavior comes from being a disjointed person. In order to absorb other people’s abilities as his own, Sylar must alter his DNA to match the more evolved segment contained in each Special. But such change to his own composition brings along not only abilities, but small hints of his victim’s personality traits. Neuroticism, carelessness, a god-complex, all amplified and integrated into his own personality. Makes for a really messed up, piecemeal person.

Then, there’s always the abilities themselves. There’s a reason why the Specials in Heroes only ever have one ability. It’s because just one is terror enough. Sylar now has twelve, and each one creates new terrors that separate him from other human beings. He’s lost the capacity to build trust (lie detection), he couldn’t care less about pain (regeneration), and he’s even losing his own physical form (shapeshifting). Sylar is losing his own identity, and his powers are redefining and overtaking him.

Unexpected power in the form of a weapon, or in this case a power, draws people to take risks they would never touch otherwise. For Sylar’s, his collection of abilities has multiplied his risk-taking exponentially, and he’s never faced real consequences for it. It goes something like this: Sylar does something crazy, kills people, gets caught, breaks out. The pattern has been repeated so many times that a psychopath can’t help but feel unstoppable.

But the villain isn’t without some redeeming qualities. Sadly for Sylar, he fluctuates so much between destruction and repentance that for those close to him, his remorse has lost any meaning. Deep down, Sylar really only wants to be loved, and no matter how cliched it might be, he does not want to die alone. Any desires to feel or be special only exist because he wants to impress others, especially his mother, and in exchange, receive their love. However, because of how many people he has killed, for a long time Sylar believed he deserved to live in his own isolated hell, away from others so that he can do no more damage, and so that he will live the rest of his immortal life without being loved by anyone.

Now, after Peter Petrelli, the hero to Sylar’s villain, and the man who has every reason to hate Sylar, gives him another chance, Sylar has latched onto Peter’s graciousness in an effort to prove himself. He’s decided that he will make an honest attempt to use his abilities for good (we’ve heard this one before), and he’s experienced first-hand how good it feels to take the hero’s path. How absolutely right it feels. Whether he can keep it up this time, or if he’ll relapse again however, will be shaped by those around him during this next part of his life.

Items on your character at canon point: Probably just his clothes, his watch and a baseball cap.

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:

Because this is Sylar, and he’s spent the last few years killing people for their abilities, he has a lot. Strengths and weaknesses of each power, as applicable, are listed in their own descriptions. Overall  weaknesses will be listed afterwards.

Intuitive Aptitude (and the Hunger weakness)

Sylar’s original power: the innate ability to understand how things work. It’s what allows him to know why a watch is off by 2 seconds, and it causes him to cut open people’s heads so he can examine their brain to understand their DNA. Once he does, Sylar can re-arrange his own DNA to obtain their power. Sylar can also absorb others’ abilities through empathy and understanding their deepest fears and desires. However, because of his own self-absorbed nature, Sylar is only able to do this once, with a woman he thought he loved, but then later decided to kill. It was not until he acquired the Empathy ability that he was better able to (and forced) to understand others. The crushing and pivotal weakness to this ability is that being able to understand how anything works also creates an insatiable hunger to know how everything works. The feeling is something that will take Sylar years to control, and in the meantime, the ability itself has final say over all of the actions he takes. Whenever Sylar discovers someone with a new ability, he cannot stop himself from pursuing it, and killing the host, if that’s what it takes to gain the knowledge he needs.

Telekinesis

Moving objects with his mind. Sylar has flipped over a large jeep just as easily moving a cup across the table. He’s frozen a bullet in mid-air, though it was shot from a point-blank distance at his head. He’s also levitated dozens of small pieces of glass from the ground and sprayed them out in all directions. Telekinesis was Sylar’s first absorbed power, and since then has been his absolute favorite because unlike his other powers, this one in particular gives him the most power of others.

Rapid cellular regeneration

Taken from Claire, this ability heals Sylar despite how physically damaged he might be, in a manner of seconds or minutes. The one exception, is a microscopic spot in the back of his head. When impaled, the regeneration does not function, and Sylar is for all intents and purposes dead. An easy way to permanently kill Sylar is to decapitate him, and then completely destroy his head or brain in any manner. This particular power has numbed Sylar to the concept of violence. He understands of course that most other people will die, but having a body that is nearly indestructible has dehumanized him to the full meaning of pain. Finally, on the off chance that Sylar does live to be older than the normal lifespan of a human being, this power will keep in alive, and looking 28. At such an old age, the moment this ability is taken away, he will disintegrate and die.

Alchemy

Changing the chemical makeup of any substance to that of another. The man Sylar got it from liked to change any object into pure gold.

Psychometry

The ability to perceive the history of an object by touch. Via this ability, Sylar can often feel the memories of other people, and in a few instances, was tricked into thinking that they were his own. Sylar has implied that if someone was conscious and he used this power on a person for long enough, he could absorb all of their memories.

Sound manipulation

The ability to mimic and distort noise, replicate frequencies, and create devastating sonic blasts. Probably just because it isn’t very stylish, Sylar doesn’t use this one as frequently.

Electric Manipulation

The ability to generate voltage, and manipulate and propel electricity up to fatal limits. It was the first power Sylar was able to absorb through empathy and not killing. If this ability it used while Sylar is wet however, he will electrocute himself.

Lie Detection

The ability to detect verbal lies, but the power does not give Sylar automatic knowledge of the truth. He also can’t turn this one on and off like most of the others, so constantly knowing that people are lying to him fuels his own distrust of the entire world. He cannot detect if someone is lying by omission or is clearly not telling him something, except by normal human standards.

Shapeshifting

Allows Sylar to alter his own body to match that of another person that he has a tissue sample from. Usually this is accomplished by touch. He can change into another gender, become taller or shorter to match the transformation. Shapeshifting takes a few seconds to complete, and can be painful, as the entire body, including bone structure transforms. If Sylar is knocked out, he will retain his shape shifted look, but DNA testing will always reveal his true identity. While this ability is extremely useful, Sylar avoids it if possible. Using it too often makes him feel as if he’s losing his grasp on his own identity.

Disintegration

Ability to make objects break down. The targeted object will quiver, then collapse and break down at the snap of a finger. We’ve never seen anyone with this power attempt to use it on a person, though the original Special who had it was worried it would work on organic matter.

Flight

Ability to fly, up to supersonic speeds.

Empathy

Upon skin contact, this ability allows Sylar to feel the emotions, thoughts, hopes and deepest desires of his target. The longer the contact, or the more intense the contact, the more Sylar can detect. Sylar had difficulty detecting his own deepest desire however, and needed to press ink into his skin to see what his power would reveal via a tattoo. The original person with this ability, Lydia, frequently used body tattoos as a way for her power to channel another person’s deepest desires.

This particular ability was gained in the final episodes of Heroes, and I believe has halted Sylar’s killing spree. He can now feed his hunger without death, and it’s caused him to not kill when he previously would have in all situations.

Sylar can also easily weave new backstories for himself and take on new identities to try and con others into thinking he’s a different person. He’s convinced local police officers that he was FBI, set himself up as a delivery man with a southern accent, and he’s even impersonated other Specials. However, how long Sylar can actually maintain each character depends on his interactions with other people. He plays along for as long as it amuses him, but as soon as a con doesn’t go his way, he drops the act and just starts telekinetically flinging people and objects around.

Overall Weaknesses

Brain Paralysis

All of his powers are immediately unusable if Sylar is unable to have normal functionality over his brain. Mohinder Suresh has been seen to stop Sylar’s abilities with an IV drip that causes paralysis in parts of the brain.

Emotional Manipulation

Sylar has the maturity of a child when it comes to emotional understanding and experience. He’s easily manipulated by anyone who shows a genuine interest in him, as long as outright lies aren’t spoken. His constant need to feel special and “good enough” can be easily tapped into to distract him, anger him, or calm him, depending on what someone is after. Heck, a random woman was able to convince Sylar she was his real mother simply because she said he deserved to be loved.

The Hunger

The same hunger that drives him is what haunts him. Sylar has even given Matt Parkman free reign into his mind, in the hopes that Parkman could suppress the hunger. He wants it to stop, but he doesn't know how, and it controls him so fiercely that Sylar can only ever think about stopping it if there are no new abilities around for him to hunt down. Anyone who can offer a conceivable way of stopping it can get Sylar to do almost anything.

Samples

Network/Action Spam Sample: Link

Prose Log Sample:

Sylar had been sipping a cup of coffee when a knock had come to the door, and Peter had glanced at him before shrugging and going to answer it.

It had been incredibly kind of Peter to let him stay in his apartment, kindness being an attribute that Sylar had always known but had never been honestly grateful for. Until now. So Sylar repeated his thanks many times, in a voice that he used to use only on the days he still pretended to be Gabriel Gray, a simple watchmaker with a mom who lives in Queens and a dad who abandoned them, and not Gabriel Sylar, killer extraordinaire and a crazed psychopath who was destined to die alone.

Because in cold, hard reality, Sylar had needed to stay. He needed Peter. After spending those very real five years together, having Peter around seemed like the only way he could get through his sudden self-realization that doing the right thing wrought its own sense of fulfillment. That it gave him the chance to not end up immortal but alone. It also didn't hurt that only Peter believed that he could change his ways.

So when Claire came in through the door, Peter trailing not far behind her, Sylar's initial reaction had actually been of hope. She knew he was staying here and yet she was visiting anyway. He hoped that she was ready to start forgiving him. Forgiveness was a beautiful thought. But even Peter, with his superhuman ability to forgive, didn’t have any quantity of it left to allocate to Sylar. The tricky thing about forgiveness sometimes, is that it requires letting go. And well, after you murder someone’s loved ones, they usually have a very hard time letting it go. What Peter gave him instead was faith, and a little time.

But after a few minutes, any delusions Sylar had of getting Claire's forgiveness were appropriately and completely disbanded. With Peter there, the two of them barely talked, but when she spoke her phrases were each laced with a passive aggressive undertone and insult. And though Sylar might be detoxicating his own villainous attributes, it didn’t mean he was going to lie down and take it. He wanted to be a hero, not a pansy. So Sylar shot back, every single one of his words dripping with double meaning.

They argued for the next thirty minutes.

But despite how much Sylar clearly wanted to lash out and literally throw Claire out the apartment — which under normal circumstances is what he would have done — Sylar instead looked constantly to Peter for cues.

Was that comment too much? Am I being a bother? She started it.

But each time, Peter really only gave him one cue in return. Be nice.

So he tried. He turned the sarcasm down, allowing Claire to get away with her less-than-subtle commentary. It was harder than it looked. He could easily shut Claire’s mouth and toss her out the window to end the agony. It was so tempting. Sylar even visualized it in his own mind. But inch by inch, he held on to the brakes.

But who really knows if he will next time.