character. CHARACTER NAME: Laughing Beauty or Laughing Octopus. But most know her as “LB” SERIES:Metal Gear Solid 4 CANON POINT: Originally from right after her Beast form was defeated by Snake. However, I’ll be apping her with memories from the alpha phase of EV. As I dropped her shortly after that freaky, big octopus showed up, I’ll be taking her from there. AGE: I headcanon it to 20 from canon, but I’m sure enough time passed in alpha that she’s probably 21 now. Though she really acts more like a teenager. APPEARANCE: In the Octopus suit And out of it
History: Long ago, the girl who would come to be known as Laughing Octopus lived in a small, "sleepy", Scandinavian town by the sea known as the Devil's Village, which was the most famed for their love of eating octopus (or devil fish, as the town's name probably derived from). However, there was a cult that held some sort of grudge over the village (it's not clearly explained why in canon, but harboring a hatred over their love of eating octopus seems to be the thing implied). When the girl was just a young teenager, the cult somehow amassed enough weapons and resources to launch an attack on the town and took control of it overnight. They then proceeded to gather the villagers in town and executed them one by one. Once they found that young woman, however, they had something more sinister in mind for her.
Calling her the "Devil's Child", they gave her an ultimatum; she could live, but she had to participate in the killing and torture of her family and friends -- and laugh the entire time, as if she were enjoying it. With no other option left to her -- as her family and friends were doomed either way -- she did as she was told, forcing herself to howl with laughter as she went through with the horrible deed. Somewhere, in the process, she imagined that the blood that she shed was ink of an octopus, instead of blood, to help and try to make the act easier than it was. However, this act scarred her so deeply that ever since then, she hasn't been able to stop laughing -- though she laughs not because something is actually funny (though it will probably change in a RP setting where she's NOT constantly in the middle of a battle), but because she is scared.
Sometime later, she was recruited into the Beauty and the Beast Unit, given the Octopus suit to help her cope with the harshness of battles, and basically told that she could find the inner peace she so yearned for if she killed Solid/Old Snake. Working with the Pieuvre Armement PMC, she was deployed with the squad in 2010 in South America to assist a state army against local rebel soldiers (likely signifying that the PMC was mostly used for guerrilla warfare).
Fast forward to 2014, when the game actually takes place, where the first time you see Laughing Octopus, she's with her other three unitmates, killing a bunch of rebel soldiers in the Middle East before taking off. The next you see her is in South America, where she (by herself this time) takes out at least six soldiers on her own, seemingly getting too into the act of killing them before Vamp, her superior, has to throw a knife at her to draw her attention away from killing people. She then uses her Octocamo to make her face resemble Old Snake's and tells the one remaining rebel soldier to not forget that face, as it was the one who killed all of his comrades. Despite not shifting her body (and still having boobs) while having a man face, the soldier was either too stupid (or too scared to look at that part) and believed her, which caused the rebel soldiers in the area to also target Old Snake.
The next time you see her is after you talk to Naomi Hunter. Shortly after that event, Laughing Octopus busts into the hideout (with a few other soldiers) and introduces herself to Old Snake in a very creepy way before going into battle with him. After he defeats her Beast (Octopus) form, her suit falls off of her body. After struggling for a while, she vomits a huge amount of ink on the ground (probably as a side effect from the ink dispensing ability of her Octopus suit) and is shown to be, in spite of the scary ass Octopus suit, an extremely beautiful woman who isn't nearly as terrifying outside of her suit. Well, that is until she has a mental breakdown of sorts, making panicked apologies for laughing, crawling on the ground, grasping her head as memories of her youth flooded her head. She seemed to sober up, for a few seconds, but then started laughing again and slowly started walking toward Old Snake, which started the extremely weird Beauty portion of her boss fight, where her only attacks were to hug and straddle the player, and if you wait three minutes to finish her off, the two are transported to a completely white room.
Ultimately, it's up to the player on whether they want to kill her or neutralize her non-lethally. Either way, a bunch of flower petals surround her after the battle, and she curls up in the fetal position. If you kill her, her body (but not her face) turns to stone and there's no pulse when Old Snake checks it. If dealt with non-lethally, however, her body stays normal, she has a pulse, and you can even hear her snoring a little. Afterwards, Snake takes her mask and gets the story of her past from Drebin. She isn't seen for the rest of the game.
"The word on the streets says beneath those ugly-ass suits, the B&Bs are real babes -- drop dead gorgeous. They also say that each one of them's been traumatized by war... badly -- weren't even soldiers to begin with, you know -- more like victims of war. They suffered shell-shock on the battlefield -- post-traumatic -- it damaged their minds pretty much beyond repair. So the only way they could cope with the reality of battle was to become war machines themselves. The remnants of their human side is buried deep within. The Beast... that's what you see on the outside. War transforms us, Snake -- into Beasts. But deep within that shell, something human survives -- a fragile, scarred heart. Without a shell to protect it, it's like the yolk of an egg."
-- Drebin monologuing about the B&Bs to Old Snake.
The most important thing to remember about Laughing Beauty is that she more or less has a sort of has two different personalities that she created herself in order to help cope with the events that led to becoming traumatized: the Beauty (her normal personality) and the Octopus (her "Beast" side). Both personalities are most definitely her, but she finds it easier to associate all of the bad things -- and all of her most destructive traits -- with something else that isn't her. Before Snake faces her in battle against her Beauty form, she seems to start to come to terms with the fact that it was her who did all of the terrible things (which is the point I originally took her from, in canon), but the process of fully accepting that both the Beauty and the Beast personalities is something she still struggles with, even with previous time in the Alpha session.
As the above quote mentions, beneath that scary Beast armor and bloodthirsty personality, LB started off as a scared and very, very unstable individual. When the Beast armor first comes off, she still tries to continue her Octopus persona, but in just mere seconds she has a breakdown of sorts as she clenches the sides of her head saying that nothing was funny, started apologizing to a very confused Snake for laughing, told him that she was scared, and then swore that she'd never laugh again. Then a few seconds later, she starts hysterically laughing again and tries to kill him. However, I do not believe she would be the type to try to kill everyone, as she had a specific mission of to kill Solid Snake (and everyone else she was shown killing in canon, she was ordered to do so first). Due to the time she spent in EV previously, she’s at least capable enough to not curl up in a ball at the first sign of danger, though you better believe that cultists are going to probably take a huge toll on her psyche.
Because of a particularly traumatic past, LB laughs constantly; it is her namesake, after all. However, it's actually not very often that she laughs at something because it's humorous, it's simply a kind of natural response conditioned to typically correspond with negative emotions -- the more she laughs, the more she's probably having a hard time. She's had enough time around other people to at least know that this is off-putting to most people and feels a lot of shame associated with her laughter, knowing exactly what events started it in the first place. She at least knows to expect a lot of questions about that particular quirk, which she'll no doubt dodge with a lot of half-truths.
Laughing Beauty is also extremely impressionable. Since her psyche was shattered to pieces, during the events of her youth, she hadn't quite learned to live outside of the suit, and it made her quite susceptible to suggestion. Even in canon, she was entirely convinced that the pain, sorrow, and guilt she constantly felt could be alleviated just by simply killing Solid Snake, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with her traumatic experience. As listed in the previous game history, above, I’ve outlined a few memes that LB’s taken from other people, from the Alpha island.
The last thing to note about her more "normal" side is that she really seems pretty uninhibited and probably isn't very modest, when it comes to her body. It's not to say that she's Queen Skank of Zelien and will sleep with anyone (in fact, it's my personal headcanon that she's actually a virgin, due to spending her adolescent years as a living weapon), but during the Beauty portion of the fight, she doesn't seem to have any qualms against pressing herself against Snake and even straddling him. Granted, she was trying to kill him, using very, very strange powers, but I can't imagine that she'd really shy away from that kind of contact in a non-combative way if she really wanted to go that way. There's also the fact that she herself was actually supposed to be naked in her Beauty fight (though it had to be changed to avoid the dreaded Adults Only ESRB rating). As far as Alpha development goes, after Bro kind of randomly made out with her -- along with getting hit on by at least a couple of other men (and sort of liking the attention) – the whole idea of “friends with benefits” is an idea she’s willing to consider. Notice I said “consider”, though; it’d still take a lot of nudging for her to actually go that direction.
Being more used to living as a Beast -- a tool of war -- for at least the last few years of her life, LB started off as very skittish and confused by trying to live as a normal person without the Octopus suit to delude herself with. However, perhaps her greatest skill is in observing and mimicking the people around her. In her previous time in the game, she learned to be a little less creepy and less skittish in dealing with people. LB is far more sociable than she was before, realizing that she could learn what she missed in the world -- from having her life essentially taken away -- by befriending other people. However, she is still slow to trust people and doesn’t have a lot of strong friendships because of her paranoia (that and the fact that she's deathly afraid that she has some sort of "curse" on people that she gets close to... although it just chalks up to shitty circumstances as I mentioned before).
The Beast persona -- or rather the Octopus -- was something she created in her mind, shortly after killing her family in an attempt to feel better about what she did (not that it helped any). The most prominent trait, in this state of mind, is that she is very sadistic; it's said that she laughs the hardest when she's in the middle of a battle. As she was forced to laugh -- to act like she enjoyed killing her family and friends -- it really fucked her up for life. If she gets in a battle, she'll get so wrapped up in it that someone else would probably have to drag her away from it (or in canon, someone had to throw a knife to force her to leave one person alive). Violence may even be a possible secret kink, as she moans if she tries to drain Snake's life away.
She also becomes more playful in the Beast suit... to the point where a lot of her actions probably read as condescending. As the one out of the B&Bs that probably talks the most, as an Octopus she constantly challenges people to find where she's hiding, taunts the player if she manages to deflect your gunfire, and will laugh even harder if one should fall into one of her traps she sets up in her boss fight (and even taunts you for not being very smart... in another person's voice). Perhaps the reason for this behavior is the result of her own ego, considering the power she has within the suit, but I also believe part of it is sort of a defensive mechanism; she wants her opponent to be as scared of her as she's probably scared of them.
Also, although she still is still conditioned to react to most negative things with violence, she's calmed down considerably with that. Learning that she can hone her skills and take out built up aggression on any monsters that are around, it keeps her a little more focused and calm, as holing herself in a room (as she did in the beginning stages of development in EV) really isn't good for someone who spent the last four years on the battlefield -- it made her antsy. Granted, if someone really scares or pisses her off, she's still going to at least threaten with violence, but all in all she's still a lot more mellow than she was in canon.
The last really important thing to note is that after losing a couple of best friends on the island, she became severely depressed, but also a lot more focused, as she was determined to get vengeance for them by trying to find some way to kill KERNOS, who is in charge of who comes and who goes on the island. Before being brought to the island, she was mostly concerned with her own survival, but more and more she was sick of losing the people she actually gave a damn about, so if she does take a strong shining to someone, she'll become extremely protective of them.
Almost all of her most powerful abilities come from outfitting herself with her Beast suit (which I'll delve into later), but she also posses some abilities without having to put the suit on as well, which include:
The very odd ability of draining one's life by...hugging or straddling them. Seriously. No explanation is given for how the hell she does this, but if something isn't explained in the MGS series, the answer is most likely "nanomachines". To expand on this, she doesn't gain any energy of her own from the ability; it only harms her opponent. In game, it takes 25 seconds of one of her hands staying still, somewhere on the person's body (and without the person struggling) for her to kill the player. However, she seemingly has no close quarter combat skill at all, so she can easily be tossed to the ground if she attempts this move.
The ability to create a green flame and light one on fire; it should be noted though that the flame is very weak and can easily be extinguished by doing a combat roll.
She also seems to have the ability to sidestep attacks, like I'm talking she can sidestep a rocket launcher blast sometimes (and she laughs at you, to boot!). However, this seems to be a randomized ability in game, as it's most certainly possibly to hit her. So in a RP setting, she wouldn't be able to dodge every attack. If anything, it'd be a stroke of dumb luck.
Although the game only shows this ability during her Beast fight, it can probably be assumed that she can mimic any voice she hears on her own. During the fight, she copies both Naomi and Otacon's (a man) voice perfectly as a way of trying to lure the player into traps she sets up. Seeing how she never actually meets Otacon in the game, she probably only simply has to hear a person's voice enough times to be able to copy them.
Seeing how she wields a submachine gun in battle, it can be assumed she's proficient in using firearms.
Even if she only speaks English in game, she's from Scandinavia (I'm headcanoning it to Norway) so she probably knows how to speak Norwegian and Swedish. In addition to this, she probably knows at lot of French, as she led a PMC unit based in France for at least four years.
Since she -- along with every other soldier in her canon -- has nanomachines in her body, it at least regulates her body's systems (making it very hard for her to get sick, to the point that the nanos are canonly stated to be able to filter out alcohol and cleanse dirty water) and enhances her combat ability (but by no means makes her invincible).
And then with her abilities with her Beast suit, she only gets worse:
The tentacles on her suit are capable of strangling, electrocuting, bludgeoning, and having enough force to stab one through the stomach. In addition to that, they're also able to deflect bullets, and can scale ceilings and walls to greatly quicken her movements.
Another major feature of the suit is the ability to transform herself. The Octocamo within the suit is so advanced, she can easily change the colors on the exterior of the suit to have her blend in almost completely with her surroundings. In addition to that, her suit has shown shapeshifting properties, shifting into such objects as a small robot, an anatomy model, a picture, a cardboard box, a wire, and even another person entirely. Also, she can form herself into a ball, which has the ability to trample over a person.
She can also cover her surrounding area with ink, which appears as smoke. If one does not turn their back during its distribution, they could be blinded for a couple of seconds. Regardless if the target is blinded or not, she uses the ink as a mask to give herself some time to find a hiding spot.
Shortly after distributing her ink, Octopus will release homing bombs to further distract her target as she flees to find a hiding spot. If one has a gun, or can move quickly, the bombs can easily be dealt with.
ALSO, SHE CAN KIND OF SKATE ON HER TENTACLES. This is from mimicking Bro's movements on a skateboard, but she might implement the move as some sort of dodging tactic.
Lastly, I'm listing some weaknesses, because it'd be totally unfair not to have some, after all!
Cameras. It only works on her normal (Beauty) form in canon, but if one points a camera at her, she compulsively freezes into a modeling pose and stays in that position until the camera is put away.
This song. But only that song (no other song on the iPod works). The video should be self-explanatory.
It seems like she can't multitask too well in battle. While she can normally dodge bullets (in her Beast suit) with her tentacles if she's not doing anything else, if she's trying to shoot the player with her gun, it leaves her wide open for an attack.
Mental instability, but that's covered in personality.
- One (1) damaged Octopus suit. I’m just going to assume the giant Octopus overpowered it somehow and it’d feel like deja vu all over again arriving into Gamma close to the same way she arrived in the Alpha session. - One (1) FN P90, her submachine gun. - Her plug suit (AKA: that really tight fitting catsuit) to plug herself into the Octopus suit. - One (1) lilac colored smuppet, made for her by Bro. In spite of its rather suspiciously shaped appearance, LB genuinely treasures it simply because someone actually took the time to make her something.
Backtagging: YES. I'm usually pretty slow myself, so I can completely emphasize with the slower taggers here, but I always tag things until I feel the thread is finished. Feel free to nudge me if I overlook something, though. Threadjacking: Go for it. Fourthwalling: Yep, yep. Go for it. Offensive subjects: I'm good, OOCly-wise. Hit me up with anything.
Physical contact: Uh... one of her attacks is slowly killing people through hugs (and straddling people), so be careful with that. She CAN control that power and doesn't really mind hugging people, but if she jerks back suddenly from received embraces, it's because she's afraid of not being able to control her power. She eases into it, though.
Kissing is fine too, and due to someone drunkenly making out with her (in a previous game experience), she'll be more open to it than she would be straight out of canon. But she'll probably pull away from it if you're a woman or she isn't comfortable with your character. If she hates your character, expect a life draining hug for your efforts.
Romance/Sexual relations: This is a woman who's slowly getting used to the fact that she isn't a beast on the battlefield anymore; romance isn't going to be easy with her. However, it isn't impossible -- if something develops, I'm all for getting on that. Just be warned that it would be a long thing to develop with her and that she's not going to magically change her ways through the ~POWER OF LOVE~.
Sexual relations is a lot easier thing to obtain with this one, seeing how she's pretty damned touchy-feely in canon. She's a virgin though (BELIEVE IT OR NOT), so don't expect her to jump right on it, because she needs to be pretty damned comfortable with the person before she does anything. She can definitely be a friends-with-benefits kinda girl is what I'm sayin'.
IC triggers: The second she hears about cultists, she will freak the fuck out. They were the cause of her most traumatic experience that kind of shaped a lot of her character today.
But she won't be too happy to breach upon the subjects of family, torture, or talking about her life before being recruited either. She'll also react unfavorably to anyone "ungrateful" enough to bring up the topic of suicide.
Though I should mention that I don't mind if your character brings it up, just that she'll really close herself off if any of those are mentioned or she might really freak out. Not to the point of violence, mind you.
Fighting/injuring/killing: Fighting is totally awesome and I'm open to discussing who wins. LB is a fucking beast in battle, but not invincible. So injuring and killing is doable too, but please discuss this stuff with me beforehand! Device hacking: LB is dumb as hell when it comes to encrypting, so more likely than not, any of her private posts wouldn't be too hard to hack into. Telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Dude, in canon her body was being regulated by a psychic ghost (seriously). She's pretty vulnerable to this shit (so yes).
Laughing Beauty spent 45 days in the Alpha session (which was about five months in game, taking the long nights into account), so as you may imagine, she has gone through quite a bit of changes.
Arriving with her Beast suit broken, she was pretty pissed off about having her security blanket non-functional, but at the same time she was amazed at the fact that she could actually live outside of her suit, as she had been led to believe (for at least four years, in canon) that she could not survive more than a few minutes outside of it. Without the suit to rely on to make her feel safe, for the first time, in a very long time, she was put in a position where she could actually communicate with people face-to-face. As her natural observational abilities made her very good at adapting, she eventually managed to kind of get a feel for how people lived, even integrating some quirks in her own habits.
For example, her greatest bond was perhaps with Bro Strider. Though she had a hard time of understanding a lot of his bizarre antics, she eventually adopted some of his slang into her own vocabulary and took an interest in “tentacle skating” – her attempt to mimic his skateboarding with the tentacles of her suit. Even if they made out at a party once (because he was drunk and she had never kissed anyone and wanted to know what it was like), neither of them had romantic feelings toward the other; it was really just a rad bromance between the two.
She also bonded with a lot of Homestuck trolls (but especially Equius, Vriska, and Gamzee), as their violent culture resonated closely with her own history, making her feel more strongly relatable to them than most humans. It feels good when you have people who totally understand the joy in killing things, you know. But she respected them so much that she even started using colored text, but left the weird, quirk thing out, so that she could fit in with them better.
Also important was meeting Black Gold Saw and Dead Master who were also women who were more acquainted with battle than social interactions. She fought with both a couple of times and knew that they were both stronger than her, but she respected the level of their power. Really, it just fueled her desire to become stronger, so that she could maybe defeat both of them in battle someday. They were all kind of friendly rivals.
Anyway, with those important relationships out of the way, LB spent a good amount of her time in the alpha session hanging out with other people, fighting monsters for fun, and not really giving a damn that KERNOS was keeping them captive because she felt like her life was better on the island than it ever was in her homeworld.
However, when Bro disappeared from the island, she didn’t take it well at all and after lashing out at even more monsters than usual, she finally subscribed to the idea of a resistance against KERNOS, because she was certain they did something terrible to her best “homie”. In addition to that, she felt an obligation to watch over Dave (Bro’s relative) and really kind of became a big sister figure to him.
Another important event to note is a time when KERNOS had everyone choose someone for a sort of team challenge. With Equius as her best friend left on the island, she naturally chose him. However, it was soon revealed that every pair would have to face each other in a match to the death. It brought up unwanted memories for her – as she once had to kill off all of her family and friends to survive, in LB’s earlier years – but at the same time, she had gone through way too much shit to let herself die there. So even though neither of them truly wanted to kill each other, they agreed to fight each other with everything they had. After a hard fought match, however, it was Equius that wound up as the victor. She didn’t hold it against him.
Not long after that, a giant octopus showed up on the island. After having a few friends disappear, the whole incident with having to face her friend in a match to the death, and now an octopus appearing in the island, LB became paranoid that KERNOS was targeting to fuck with her specifically, though it was really just a bunch of unfortunate coincidences put together. Regardless, she was determined to kill the octopus and eat it out of spite (as her childhood dealt with a cult that hated her village for eating octopi, no really). It’s sometime during this battle that I dropped her from the game, so therefore her last memories will be from somewhere in the middle of the battle.
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fuckinghysterical) wrote2012-06-28 02:04 am
OOC PLAYER INFORMATION
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
CONTACT: DatAss on Plurk or WutWasThatNoise on AIM
OTHER CHARACTERS: Shinobu Jacobs
BASIC IC INFORMATION
CHARACTER NAME: Laughing Beauty or Laughing Octopus. But most know her as “LB”
SERIES: Metal Gear Solid 4
CANON POINT: Originally from right after her Beast form was defeated by Snake. However, I’ll be apping her with memories from the alpha phase of EV. As I dropped her shortly after that freaky, big octopus showed up, I’ll be taking her from there.
AGE: I headcanon it to 20 from canon, but I’m sure enough time passed in alpha that she’s probably 21 now. Though she really acts more like a teenager.
APPEARANCE:
In the Octopus suit
And out of it
CHARACTER HISTORY
Calling her the "Devil's Child", they gave her an ultimatum; she could live, but she had to participate in the killing and torture of her family and friends -- and laugh the entire time, as if she were enjoying it. With no other option left to her -- as her family and friends were doomed either way -- she did as she was told, forcing herself to howl with laughter as she went through with the horrible deed. Somewhere, in the process, she imagined that the blood that she shed was ink of an octopus, instead of blood, to help and try to make the act easier than it was. However, this act scarred her so deeply that ever since then, she hasn't been able to stop laughing -- though she laughs not because something is actually funny (though it will probably change in a RP setting where she's NOT constantly in the middle of a battle), but because she is scared.
Sometime later, she was recruited into the Beauty and the Beast Unit, given the Octopus suit to help her cope with the harshness of battles, and basically told that she could find the inner peace she so yearned for if she killed Solid/Old Snake. Working with the Pieuvre Armement PMC, she was deployed with the squad in 2010 in South America to assist a state army against local rebel soldiers (likely signifying that the PMC was mostly used for guerrilla warfare).
Fast forward to 2014, when the game actually takes place, where the first time you see Laughing Octopus, she's with her other three unitmates, killing a bunch of rebel soldiers in the Middle East before taking off. The next you see her is in South America, where she (by herself this time) takes out at least six soldiers on her own, seemingly getting too into the act of killing them before Vamp, her superior, has to throw a knife at her to draw her attention away from killing people. She then uses her Octocamo to make her face resemble Old Snake's and tells the one remaining rebel soldier to not forget that face, as it was the one who killed all of his comrades. Despite not shifting her body (and still having boobs) while having a man face, the soldier was either too stupid (or too scared to look at that part) and believed her, which caused the rebel soldiers in the area to also target Old Snake.
The next time you see her is after you talk to Naomi Hunter. Shortly after that event, Laughing Octopus busts into the hideout (with a few other soldiers) and introduces herself to Old Snake in a very creepy way before going into battle with him. After he defeats her Beast (Octopus) form, her suit falls off of her body. After struggling for a while, she vomits a huge amount of ink on the ground (probably as a side effect from the ink dispensing ability of her Octopus suit) and is shown to be, in spite of the scary ass Octopus suit, an extremely beautiful woman who isn't nearly as terrifying outside of her suit. Well, that is until she has a mental breakdown of sorts, making panicked apologies for laughing, crawling on the ground, grasping her head as memories of her youth flooded her head. She seemed to sober up, for a few seconds, but then started laughing again and slowly started walking toward Old Snake, which started the extremely weird Beauty portion of her boss fight, where her only attacks were to hug and straddle the player, and if you wait three minutes to finish her off, the two are transported to a completely white room.
Ultimately, it's up to the player on whether they want to kill her or neutralize her non-lethally. Either way, a bunch of flower petals surround her after the battle, and she curls up in the fetal position. If you kill her, her body (but not her face) turns to stone and there's no pulse when Old Snake checks it. If dealt with non-lethally, however, her body stays normal, she has a pulse, and you can even hear her snoring a little. Afterwards, Snake takes her mask and gets the story of her past from Drebin. She isn't seen for the rest of the game.
PERSONALITY
-- Drebin monologuing about the B&Bs to Old Snake.
The most important thing to remember about Laughing Beauty is that she more or less has a sort of has two different personalities that she created herself in order to help cope with the events that led to becoming traumatized: the Beauty (her normal personality) and the Octopus (her "Beast" side). Both personalities are most definitely her, but she finds it easier to associate all of the bad things -- and all of her most destructive traits -- with something else that isn't her. Before Snake faces her in battle against her Beauty form, she seems to start to come to terms with the fact that it was her who did all of the terrible things (which is the point I originally took her from, in canon), but the process of fully accepting that both the Beauty and the Beast personalities is something she still struggles with, even with previous time in the Alpha session.
As the above quote mentions, beneath that scary Beast armor and bloodthirsty personality, LB started off as a scared and very, very unstable individual. When the Beast armor first comes off, she still tries to continue her Octopus persona, but in just mere seconds she has a breakdown of sorts as she clenches the sides of her head saying that nothing was funny, started apologizing to a very confused Snake for laughing, told him that she was scared, and then swore that she'd never laugh again. Then a few seconds later, she starts hysterically laughing again and tries to kill him. However, I do not believe she would be the type to try to kill everyone, as she had a specific mission of to kill Solid Snake (and everyone else she was shown killing in canon, she was ordered to do so first). Due to the time she spent in EV previously, she’s at least capable enough to not curl up in a ball at the first sign of danger, though you better believe that cultists are going to probably take a huge toll on her psyche.
Because of a particularly traumatic past, LB laughs constantly; it is her namesake, after all. However, it's actually not very often that she laughs at something because it's humorous, it's simply a kind of natural response conditioned to typically correspond with negative emotions -- the more she laughs, the more she's probably having a hard time. She's had enough time around other people to at least know that this is off-putting to most people and feels a lot of shame associated with her laughter, knowing exactly what events started it in the first place. She at least knows to expect a lot of questions about that particular quirk, which she'll no doubt dodge with a lot of half-truths.
Laughing Beauty is also extremely impressionable. Since her psyche was shattered to pieces, during the events of her youth, she hadn't quite learned to live outside of the suit, and it made her quite susceptible to suggestion. Even in canon, she was entirely convinced that the pain, sorrow, and guilt she constantly felt could be alleviated just by simply killing Solid Snake, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with her traumatic experience. As listed in the previous game history, above, I’ve outlined a few memes that LB’s taken from other people, from the Alpha island.
The last thing to note about her more "normal" side is that she really seems pretty uninhibited and probably isn't very modest, when it comes to her body. It's not to say that she's Queen Skank of Zelien and will sleep with anyone (in fact, it's my personal headcanon that she's actually a virgin, due to spending her adolescent years as a living weapon), but during the Beauty portion of the fight, she doesn't seem to have any qualms against pressing herself against Snake and even straddling him. Granted, she was trying to kill him, using very, very strange powers, but I can't imagine that she'd really shy away from that kind of contact in a non-combative way if she really wanted to go that way. There's also the fact that she herself was actually supposed to be naked in her Beauty fight (though it had to be changed to avoid the dreaded Adults Only ESRB rating). As far as Alpha development goes, after Bro kind of randomly made out with her -- along with getting hit on by at least a couple of other men (and sort of liking the attention) – the whole idea of “friends with benefits” is an idea she’s willing to consider. Notice I said “consider”, though; it’d still take a lot of nudging for her to actually go that direction.
Being more used to living as a Beast -- a tool of war -- for at least the last few years of her life, LB started off as very skittish and confused by trying to live as a normal person without the Octopus suit to delude herself with. However, perhaps her greatest skill is in observing and mimicking the people around her. In her previous time in the game, she learned to be a little less creepy and less skittish in dealing with people. LB is far more sociable than she was before, realizing that she could learn what she missed in the world -- from having her life essentially taken away -- by befriending other people. However, she is still slow to trust people and doesn’t have a lot of strong friendships because of her paranoia (that and the fact that she's deathly afraid that she has some sort of "curse" on people that she gets close to... although it just chalks up to shitty circumstances as I mentioned before).
The Beast persona -- or rather the Octopus -- was something she created in her mind, shortly after killing her family in an attempt to feel better about what she did (not that it helped any). The most prominent trait, in this state of mind, is that she is very sadistic; it's said that she laughs the hardest when she's in the middle of a battle. As she was forced to laugh -- to act like she enjoyed killing her family and friends -- it really fucked her up for life. If she gets in a battle, she'll get so wrapped up in it that someone else would probably have to drag her away from it (or in canon, someone had to throw a knife to force her to leave one person alive). Violence may even be a possible secret kink, as she moans if she tries to drain Snake's life away.
She also becomes more playful in the Beast suit... to the point where a lot of her actions probably read as condescending. As the one out of the B&Bs that probably talks the most, as an Octopus she constantly challenges people to find where she's hiding, taunts the player if she manages to deflect your gunfire, and will laugh even harder if one should fall into one of her traps she sets up in her boss fight (and even taunts you for not being very smart... in another person's voice). Perhaps the reason for this behavior is the result of her own ego, considering the power she has within the suit, but I also believe part of it is sort of a defensive mechanism; she wants her opponent to be as scared of her as she's probably scared of them.
Also, although she still is still conditioned to react to most negative things with violence, she's calmed down considerably with that. Learning that she can hone her skills and take out built up aggression on any monsters that are around, it keeps her a little more focused and calm, as holing herself in a room (as she did in the beginning stages of development in EV) really isn't good for someone who spent the last four years on the battlefield -- it made her antsy. Granted, if someone really scares or pisses her off, she's still going to at least threaten with violence, but all in all she's still a lot more mellow than she was in canon.
The last really important thing to note is that after losing a couple of best friends on the island, she became severely depressed, but also a lot more focused, as she was determined to get vengeance for them by trying to find some way to kill KERNOS, who is in charge of who comes and who goes on the island. Before being brought to the island, she was mostly concerned with her own survival, but more and more she was sick of losing the people she actually gave a damn about, so if she does take a strong shining to someone, she'll become extremely protective of them.
ABILITIES/WEAKNESSES
- The very odd ability of draining one's life by...hugging or straddling them. Seriously. No explanation is given for how the hell she does this, but if something isn't explained in the MGS series, the answer is most likely "nanomachines". To expand on this, she doesn't gain any energy of her own from the ability; it only harms her opponent. In game, it takes 25 seconds of one of her hands staying still, somewhere on the person's body (and without the person struggling) for her to kill the player. However, she seemingly has no close quarter combat skill at all, so she can easily be tossed to the ground if she attempts this move.
- The ability to create a green flame and light one on fire; it should be noted though that the flame is very weak and can easily be extinguished by doing a combat roll.
- She also seems to have the ability to sidestep attacks, like I'm talking she can sidestep a rocket launcher blast sometimes (and she laughs at you, to boot!). However, this seems to be a randomized ability in game, as it's most certainly possibly to hit her. So in a RP setting, she wouldn't be able to dodge every attack. If anything, it'd be a stroke of dumb luck.
- Although the game only shows this ability during her Beast fight, it can probably be assumed that she can mimic any voice she hears on her own. During the fight, she copies both Naomi and Otacon's (a man) voice perfectly as a way of trying to lure the player into traps she sets up. Seeing how she never actually meets Otacon in the game, she probably only simply has to hear a person's voice enough times to be able to copy them.
- Seeing how she wields a submachine gun in battle, it can be assumed she's proficient in using firearms.
- Even if she only speaks English in game, she's from Scandinavia (I'm headcanoning it to Norway) so she probably knows how to speak Norwegian and Swedish. In addition to this, she probably knows at lot of French, as she led a PMC unit based in France for at least four years.
- Since she -- along with every other soldier in her canon -- has nanomachines in her body, it at least regulates her body's systems (making it very hard for her to get sick, to the point that the nanos are canonly stated to be able to filter out alcohol and cleanse dirty water) and enhances her combat ability (but by no means makes her invincible).
And then with her abilities with her Beast suit, she only gets worse:- The tentacles on her suit are capable of strangling, electrocuting, bludgeoning, and having enough force to stab one through the stomach. In addition to that, they're also able to deflect bullets, and can scale ceilings and walls to greatly quicken her movements.
- Another major feature of the suit is the ability to transform herself. The Octocamo within the suit is so advanced, she can easily change the colors on the exterior of the suit to have her blend in almost completely with her surroundings. In addition to that, her suit has shown shapeshifting properties, shifting into such objects as a small robot, an anatomy model, a picture, a cardboard box, a wire, and even another person entirely. Also, she can form herself into a ball, which has the ability to trample over a person.
- She can also cover her surrounding area with ink, which appears as smoke. If one does not turn their back during its distribution, they could be blinded for a couple of seconds. Regardless if the target is blinded or not, she uses the ink as a mask to give herself some time to find a hiding spot.
- Shortly after distributing her ink, Octopus will release homing bombs to further distract her target as she flees to find a hiding spot. If one has a gun, or can move quickly, the bombs can easily be dealt with.
- ALSO, SHE CAN KIND OF SKATE ON HER TENTACLES. This is from mimicking Bro's movements on a skateboard, but she might implement the move as some sort of dodging tactic.
Lastly, I'm listing some weaknesses, because it'd be totally unfair not to have some, after all!INVENTORY
- One (1) FN P90, her submachine gun.
- Her plug suit (AKA: that really tight fitting catsuit) to plug herself into the Octopus suit.
- One (1) lilac colored smuppet, made for her by Bro. In spite of its rather suspiciously shaped appearance, LB genuinely treasures it simply because someone actually took the time to make her something.
PERMISSIONS
Threadjacking: Go for it.
Fourthwalling: Yep, yep. Go for it.
Offensive subjects: I'm good, OOCly-wise. Hit me up with anything.
Physical contact: Uh... one of her attacks is slowly killing people through hugs (and straddling people), so be careful with that. She CAN control that power and doesn't really mind hugging people, but if she jerks back suddenly from received embraces, it's because she's afraid of not being able to control her power. She eases into it, though.
Kissing is fine too, and due to someone drunkenly making out with her (in a previous game experience), she'll be more open to it than she would be straight out of canon. But she'll probably pull away from it if you're a woman or she isn't comfortable with your character. If she hates your character, expect a life draining hug for your efforts.
Romance/Sexual relations: This is a woman who's slowly getting used to the fact that she isn't a beast on the battlefield anymore; romance isn't going to be easy with her. However, it isn't impossible -- if something develops, I'm all for getting on that. Just be warned that it would be a long thing to develop with her and that she's not going to magically change her ways through the ~POWER OF LOVE~.
Sexual relations is a lot easier thing to obtain with this one, seeing how she's pretty damned touchy-feely in canon. She's a virgin though (BELIEVE IT OR NOT), so don't expect her to jump right on it, because she needs to be pretty damned comfortable with the person before she does anything. She can definitely be a friends-with-benefits kinda girl is what I'm sayin'.
IC triggers: The second she hears about cultists, she will freak the fuck out. They were the cause of her most traumatic experience that kind of shaped a lot of her character today.
But she won't be too happy to breach upon the subjects of family, torture, or talking about her life before being recruited either. She'll also react unfavorably to anyone "ungrateful" enough to bring up the topic of suicide.
Though I should mention that I don't mind if your character brings it up, just that she'll really close herself off if any of those are mentioned or she might really freak out. Not to the point of violence, mind you.
Fighting/injuring/killing: Fighting is totally awesome and I'm open to discussing who wins. LB is a fucking beast in battle, but not invincible. So injuring and killing is doable too, but please discuss this stuff with me beforehand!
Device hacking: LB is dumb as hell when it comes to encrypting, so more likely than not, any of her private posts wouldn't be too hard to hack into.
Telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Dude, in canon her body was being regulated by a psychic ghost (seriously). She's pretty vulnerable to this shit (so yes).
PREVIOUS EV HISTORY
Laughing Beauty spent 45 days in the Alpha session (which was about five months in game, taking the long nights into account), so as you may imagine, she has gone through quite a bit of changes.
Arriving with her Beast suit broken, she was pretty pissed off about having her security blanket non-functional, but at the same time she was amazed at the fact that she could actually live outside of her suit, as she had been led to believe (for at least four years, in canon) that she could not survive more than a few minutes outside of it. Without the suit to rely on to make her feel safe, for the first time, in a very long time, she was put in a position where she could actually communicate with people face-to-face. As her natural observational abilities made her very good at adapting, she eventually managed to kind of get a feel for how people lived, even integrating some quirks in her own habits.
For example, her greatest bond was perhaps with Bro Strider. Though she had a hard time of understanding a lot of his bizarre antics, she eventually adopted some of his slang into her own vocabulary and took an interest in “tentacle skating” – her attempt to mimic his skateboarding with the tentacles of her suit. Even if they made out at a party once (because he was drunk and she had never kissed anyone and wanted to know what it was like), neither of them had romantic feelings toward the other; it was really just a rad bromance between the two.
She also bonded with a lot of Homestuck trolls (but especially Equius, Vriska, and Gamzee), as their violent culture resonated closely with her own history, making her feel more strongly relatable to them than most humans. It feels good when you have people who totally understand the joy in killing things, you know. But she respected them so much that she even started using colored text, but left the weird, quirk thing out, so that she could fit in with them better.
Also important was meeting Black Gold Saw and Dead Master who were also women who were more acquainted with battle than social interactions. She fought with both a couple of times and knew that they were both stronger than her, but she respected the level of their power. Really, it just fueled her desire to become stronger, so that she could maybe defeat both of them in battle someday. They were all kind of friendly rivals.
Anyway, with those important relationships out of the way, LB spent a good amount of her time in the alpha session hanging out with other people, fighting monsters for fun, and not really giving a damn that KERNOS was keeping them captive because she felt like her life was better on the island than it ever was in her homeworld.
However, when Bro disappeared from the island, she didn’t take it well at all and after lashing out at even more monsters than usual, she finally subscribed to the idea of a resistance against KERNOS, because she was certain they did something terrible to her best “homie”. In addition to that, she felt an obligation to watch over Dave (Bro’s relative) and really kind of became a big sister figure to him.
Another important event to note is a time when KERNOS had everyone choose someone for a sort of team challenge. With Equius as her best friend left on the island, she naturally chose him. However, it was soon revealed that every pair would have to face each other in a match to the death. It brought up unwanted memories for her – as she once had to kill off all of her family and friends to survive, in LB’s earlier years – but at the same time, she had gone through way too much shit to let herself die there. So even though neither of them truly wanted to kill each other, they agreed to fight each other with everything they had. After a hard fought match, however, it was Equius that wound up as the victor. She didn’t hold it against him.
Not long after that, a giant octopus showed up on the island. After having a few friends disappear, the whole incident with having to face her friend in a match to the death, and now an octopus appearing in the island, LB became paranoid that KERNOS was targeting to fuck with her specifically, though it was really just a bunch of unfortunate coincidences put together. Regardless, she was determined to kill the octopus and eat it out of spite (as her childhood dealt with a cult that hated her village for eating octopi, no really). It’s sometime during this battle that I dropped her from the game, so therefore her last memories will be from somewhere in the middle of the battle.