---, billy

[DOCTOR HORRIBLE]

DOCTOR HORRIBLE/BILLY


IN-CHARACTER
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FULL NAME: Billy
NICKNAMES: Doctor Horrible, Doc
DATE OF BIRTH: 29th May
AGE: 28
SPECIES: Human (super-villain)
ABILITIES: Billy possesses genius-level intellect and an understanding of technology that enables him to create devices most of the world couldn’t even dream of (and Johnny Snow’s inventions come nowhere close to Doctor Horrible’s)...although most of his weapons tend to fail. It’s not to do with his own abilities, of course; the world just...doesn’t have the right equipment. Or something. And BTW, he’ll have you know that his Transmatter Ray did transmat—uh, transfer, matter. He can’t be blamed if the molecules shifted.
FANDOM: Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

PERSONALITY:

Billy wants to change the world. He can see all the bad in it, in ways that nobody else seems to notice, and more than anything, he knows it needs to be changed. He doesn’t mean on a small scale, either; sure, you could get rid of so-called heroes like Captain Hammer, or riot against the mayor, but it doesn’t mean anything. The world is a mess. The problem is that Billy isn’t the sort of person anybody notices. He’s extremely smart, but that only led to bullying when he was a kid; nobody appreciates a genius. That’s been his mantra through most of his life: nobody appreciates a genius. That’s why no-one notices him, and he can’t talk to people (and as for talking to girls, well...he can sort-of talk to Penny without putting his foot in it, sometimes, if he has frozen yoghurt to distract her with), and he feels tied down by what’s expected of him. It’s always about expectations; Billy has (mostly) followed the rules his entire life, but doing that hasn’t brought him any satisfaction. Sure, he gets along fine, with his frozen yoghurt and his books and his following-Penny-about-with-a-telephoto-lens, but it’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough, because he’s just this invisible guy; he doesn’t believe in himself, and therefore the world isn’t going to believe in him either. Billy spends a lot of time on his own because of this, in his own little world; he plays out scenarios constantly in his head, ignoring Moist’s advice that he should try seeing someone from the Henchmen’s Union, and imagines what the world would be like if he were better, or had more confidence in himself, or didn’t live in a fantasy world...or if he simply went into the Laundromat one day and swept Penny off her feet, instead of accidentally saying something he didn’t mean and having to sound like an idiot so she didn’t think of him as a stalker. That was only one time, though...or twice. Maybe three times; it’s not like Billy keeps count, okay!

And so Billy created Doctor Horrible. The Doctor is everything that Billy is not; he’s confident, self-assured, not at all worried by what people think of him, and he’s not trapped by the laws of society that mean that Billy can’t hate Captain Hammer publicly, because he’s a hero. Huh, some hero, who won’t go within ten yards of the homeless, and who throws cars at people just trying to go about their own business and freeze things. Anyway, that’s beside the point, although Captain Hammer is his nemesis – not that idiot Johnny Snow, however many emails he sends in. It’s clear that Snow is just a wannabe; he saw the video blog Doctor Horrible does, which is a way for him to sound board how he’s going to change the world, and to gain supporters and recognition for his heists—even if the Mayor and Hammer seem to watch it. That’s not an issue, though; he just has to be careful about talking about things in advance, especially if he’s still working out kinks. There are always kinks; it’s an occupational hazard of being a super-villain. Doctor Horrible isn’t afraid of anything; at least, he wouldn’t admit to be, although the idea of Captain Hammer (that guy’s a tool) throwing something else at his head certainly doesn’t fill him with excitement. Doctor Horrible can use his intelligence for something great, instead of it being lost, and he can change the world with it; he and Billy might have the same ideals, and they both want change desperately, but their methods are completely different. Billy simply wants change, an almost anarchic society, while Doctor Horrible wants...to run it. Billy isn’t inherently evil, despite his aspirations to be like Bad Horse and join the Evil League of Evil—he just wants to be noticed. Doctor Horrible is about giving him the confidence to change the world, because otherwise he’d never get anywhere; Billy is just a bumbling guy who can barely talk to the girl he likes at the Laundromat. How could someone like him ever do anything?

But Billy is having more trouble keeping the two aspects of himself separate as of late; Penny has blurred the lines completely. He loves her – he has done ever since he first saw her at the Laundromat and changed the days he went so he could accidentally bump into her – and that is the same, whether he’s being his pathetic self, or Doctor Horrible. He has a problem, though; Billy wants Penny to notice him, which only ever happens when he’s being evil because of the very fact that he’s pathetic, whereas Doctor Horrible wants her to like him for who he is, rather than because he’s a mastermind who has absolutely no need to adhere to the laws of the world at all (which is something Doctor Horrible likes a lot, BTW; who’d want to be a hero, if you have to save people all the time, and concern yourself with petty things like your muscles or...hair...instead of the big picture?). His motives have changed; it’s no longer simply about changing the world, it’s now about getting the girl too. And with the letter from the ELE, telling him to kill someone—he’s finding that hard, because as much as he wants to be in the Evil League of Evil, Doctor Horrible doesn’t like the idea of killing someone, because Billy doesn’t want to kill anybody; at the end of the day, they are the same person. And as for Captain Hammer...Doctor Horrible hates him, because he’s his nemesis and he has Penny. Billy hates him, because he’s confident and smarmy and he has Penny. At the end of the day, Billy wants Penny, and having Captain Hammer in both parts of his life, the two parts he’s been trying so hard to separate, is an extraordinary amount of stress on him. Doctor Horrible might eat stress for breakfast – actually, he ignores it and goes and builds something awesome that will make him ruler of the world, if he could just get it to work – but Billy finds it harder to cope with. It almost killed him during school exams.

It’s because of Hammer that Billy is slipping more and more into being Doctor Horrible the majority of the time; Billy can’t hate him, because of the whole hero thing. Doctor Horrible can, and really, all he wants to do to the—okay, so he can’t think of a word bad enough to describe Captain Hammer, but Doctor Horrible really wants to squish him underfoot like the smarmy tool he is. Although then he’d probably get hair product all over his shoes...anyway, the point is, he really hates Captain Hammer. Billy wouldn’t be slipping further and further away from Penny if it wasn’t for him; he hates that she can’t see Hammer for what he really is, and that she can’t see Billy himself for who he really is either, because he’s terrified of showing her what’s under his mask (or perhaps that should be ‘goggles’) and losing her forever. He’s only just started being able to talk to her, and that’s taken months. But he loves her; he loves her as Horrible, when she gets under his skin and makes him care, and he loves her as Billy, when she’s the only good thing left in a world that needs to be cauterised. And maybe that’s the problem; he cares about someone, in a way that he didn’t before he met her, and it’s clouding his judgement, because part of being Doctor Horrible is about not caring. Caring gets you hurt.

Maybe it’ll be easier now that he’s here, though. Billy doesn’t know where he is, or how he got here (although he wouldn’t put it past the heroes’ version of the ELE, whatever it’s called, to decide to send him to some other world instead of actually listening to him for a change and realising that the real world really does need sorting out), but there’s no Captain Hammer here. There’s no Penny either, which sucks, but Billy thinks he might be able to re-establish those lines again, and go back to wanting to change the world. Hey, this place might not have electricity, but it still needs ruling. Doctor Horrible wants to do that. And this time, he doesn’t think there’s anybody that can stop him—not even Penny’s voice as his conscience.

HISTORY:

Billy was a smart kid. Not just the kind of smart that means you ace tests and everyone hates you for it, but the moved-up-three-grades type—which meant that everyone still hated him for it. If he’d been left in the grade he was supposed to be in, though, Billy was pretty sure that he’d have killed himself (or his teacher) from boredom by the time he was five, so if he was going to be hated, he might as well do it in a place where his brain was actually getting some stimulation. Not enough, sure, because even sixth grade work was dull and he had to lose himself in fantasy worlds of super-heroes and villains to make the fact that he was being constantly picked on by his older class peers alright, but it was something. As a baby, his development had been fast, as as he’d grown through his toddler years, it was obvious that Billy’s mental capacities were more than just those of your averagely bright child. IQ tests placed him practically off the scale, and from the moment he could read, he devoured every book he could lay his hands on – but his favourites weren’t those with long words or considered classics, but comic books; stories of good and evil had always interested him. It was a good thing that he had found something to hold his interest like that; being so smart had left Billy with practically no social skills, and being placed in classes of people several years older than he was left him as the obvious target for all bullies’ taunting. He struggled through school, not because the work was difficult – Billy didn’t think he’d ever been taught something he didn’t understand on the first try – but because the people were difficult. He dreaded going, and not even the prospect of learning something new could change that; it wasn’t like his teachers knew anything really interesting, anyway. They were just regurgitating facts from books, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d have turned into a quivering mess of jelly at the very idea of talking in front of a group of people, Billy knew he could have done that just as well.

By the time he was nineteen, Billy had a degree in engineering under his belt, and a frantic desire to try and change the world. He didn’t know how he was going to do that, because nobody noticed him – not even that girl, the blonde one who sat two in front and three across from him in his maths class, the one who he’d spent the last three years pining over noticed him, although pretty much the moment he graduated, Billy forgot about her – but it was clear to him that so many things were wrong. It wasn’t something he could change by handing out fliers or helping the elderly; the world was a mess. All these so-called heroes darting about town didn’t help things, either; who did they think they were kidding? They were the reason that society had got so bad; everyone was relying on them to save the day, so much so that they were letting the world around them crumble to pieces, when really, all these ‘heroes’ wanted was fame and fortune and to flex their muscles in people’s faces to get the girls. Groupies were idiots. But in fact, it was one of these hero-versus-villain fights that gave Billy the inspiration he needed to figure out how he could change the world himself; he just happened to be rooting for the villain. From the first strains of the ‘mwahaha’ evil laugh, to the way that disregard for rules and social conventions meant that he could do anything he wanted—it was perfect. Billy had always been tied down by what he was supposed to do, or what people expected, and it had been horrendous; but this guy—he was free to do what he pleased, hate the people everyone loved, and he was changing things. Perfection.

And so Doctor Horrible was born; Billy’s alter ego was almost the exact opposite to him, with the same ultimate ideals, but no moral grey areas to keep him in check. Finally, Billy felt that he could change the world, and people might actually listen to him for once. He started off small; designing weapons to take out the heroes without plans to build them, procuring blueprints for important government buildings by breaking into the planning offices, finding an awesome lab coat, practising his laugh, and meeting his buddy Moist when he went scouting round after one of the Henchmen’s Union meetings, hoping he’d find a sidekick. Every good villain needed a sidekick. But he wanted more; Doctor Horrible wasn’t content with being an underground saviour of the world—he needed to rule it. He wanted to be like Bad Horse, and rule not just a league (oh yeah, he also wanted to join the Evil League of Evil), but the whole world with an iron hoof. Uh, foot. Doctor Horrible had feet, in these great boots he had to get shipped from Hong Kong or somewhere because they didn’t make them over here. And do you know how hard it is to find goggles that both look evil and don’t burn rubber circles onto your forehead? Anyway, that’s beside the point; Doctor Horrible wanted more. He started building bigger weapons, testing them out at those social events nobody actually went to, where he could be sure there weren’t going to be children or really old people around. He sent in applications to the ELE, year after year, in the hope that his efforts would be enough to get him in. He still tried to change the world—and he got a nemesis. Every good super-villain has a nemesis, and Captain Hammer is Doctor Horrible’s.

Doctor Horrible doesn’t even remember how they met. It was probably something inane like having something thrown at his head while attempting a bank heist, but after that, Captain Hammer was there at everything Doctor Horrible planned, ready to beat him into a pulp just for breathing – and Doctor Horrible might have been a super-villain, but he was still Billy, and Billy was a weakling. He’d never been good at gym class, and it wasn’t like he worked out now or anything, so he couldn’t really fight back with his fists; he was too busy planning how he was going to rule the world. And with ogling Penny from across the Laundromat. She was new in town, or maybe just new to his block, but anyway, she was new, and Billy fell in love with her the moment he first laid eyes on her. He switched the days he did laundry just so he could be there at the same time as her, he even smiled at her once before ducking his head and concentrating on washing powder, and he spent all the time he wasn’t building weapons or planning to take over the world thinking about Penny – about how he’d change the world for her, dance her round the Laundromat and tell her how pretty her hair was...and apparently he wasn’t always so subtle about keeping that inside his head—although he still thinks he recovered from that one well.

And while Billy was falling in love with Penny, almost getting close to a real, audible connection on more than one occasion, Doctor Horrible was busy with his latest invention; the Freeze Ray. Stops time. At least, it was supposed to. There were a few teething problems with getting the equipment for it, and what with Captain Hammer jumping in to ruin everything again, and Penny turning up to talk to him right when he was busy trying to get a job done—it made things difficult. Why did she have to talk to him for the first time when he was trying to steal Wonderflonium? And like getting a new building would really stop the homelessness problem; it needed to be cut off at the source. Which, of course, he tried to tell her, but then he had to steal a van and Captain Hammer was there and...he was distracted. Billy would have been quite happy to be distracted by Penny all day, but Doctor Horrible knew that without the Wonderflonium, he wouldn’t be able to build his Freeze Ray and stop the Mayor and he’d never get into the Evil League of Evil and have enough status to rule the world. And he had to do what he had to do, girl or no girl. And okay, so he inadvertently introduced the girl of his dreams to his nemesis, and had to watch them fawn all over each other while he silently begged Penny to see Hammer for what he was, and his Freeze Ray had problems and he got a car thrown at his head, but...yeah, there was no upside to any of that. And the ELE wanted him to kill someone, too. That wasn’t good. Wasn’t good at all. Almost as bad as the fact that Penny was still seeing that tool, and wanted to go on more dates with him. Why? Couldn’t she see that he was a jerk, and that frozen yoghurt and Doctor Horrible giving her a whole country of her own when he ruled the world was a much better deal?

And then Billy wasn’t there anymore; he was talking to Penny in the Laundromat – or rather, trying to escape quickly because she’d just informed him that Captain Hammer was going to be coming, and the last thing Billy wanted was to be recognised as Doctor Horrible and shatter Penny’s illusions of him...as well as wanting to avoid being beaten black and blue again – and then he was somewhere else entirely. And he’d not invented a Teleport Ray, yet (after the failings of his Transmatter Ray, he thought he needed to work on it a little more before trying to do it with actual people, instead of a whole lot of money), so it wasn’t an experiment gone wrong. Having to source a new lab coat was no fun, and he still hasn’t found replacement goggles, not to mention no actual lab, or internet to be able to do his blog, but Billy thinks it could be worse. Not having Penny here sucks, but no Captain Hammer is a definite bonus. And he might not have any idea what this place is, but all worlds need ruling. Doctor Horrible wants to rule this one.

ROLEPLAY SAMPLE:

There was a library in this place; that was good. Fred liked libraries. At least, she’d liked libraries until she’d picked up the wrong book in one and ended up in a completely different world, and she’d not been back since, but she figured that since she was already in the different world this time, going inside and hiding among the stacks of books wasn’t going to make things worse. If she was lucky, maybe she’d find a book like the one that had sent her to Pylea, and she could say the words that really needed more consonants to make sense, and then she’d be sucked back through a portal and be home. Home—she’d not thought of it as home until she’d got to wherever this place was. It was her home dimension, sure, but right now she wanted to be in the Hyperion with Angel and Cordy and Wes and Charles, and hide behind the counter and sniffle until Angel came to see what was wrong, then she’d hug him and not let go until he prised her away and—she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t think about that, because she had no idea when she was going to get back there. If she was going to get back there. Get sucked through a portal once and sure, maybe a knight in shining armour will come and save you. But that had taken five years; have it happen to you twice, and Fred was pretty sure that Angel wouldn’t be coming for her again. And that terrified her; she couldn’t last another five years in a place that wasn’t home, where she didn’t feel even the tiniest bit safe. She didn’t know where she was, and Fred had to know. Alright, so she’d not been made a slave yet, which had happened within minutes of her falling into Pylea (she’d just been admiring the two suns, and trying to approximate how that would affect the physics of the world using the specifications of her own sun as a guide), but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe they were lulling her into a full sense of security by making it seem relatively nice here first. Not nice like Los Angeles nice, even though Fred hadn’t actually been to see the city since she’d first been shown to her room, but nothing was trying to kill her. Given that she had no weapons, and no strong people around to defend her, Fred was eternally grateful for that.

It didn’t make this place any better, though. If anything, the fact that thus far, nothing had tried to kill her, and she’d not encountered anybody at all, was a little disconcerting. Sure, it wasn’t as disconcerting as suddenly being in another world when the very idea of going to another dimension was enough to make you break out in a cold sweat and curl into the darkest corner you could find—but Fred guessed she was still in shock. She’d been sitting in her room and then...she’d been standing on the street. Just like that. And she’d known it wasn’t a dream, because in her dreams Fred didn’t stand in the middle of the street; they tended to be more of the fugitive-in-a-cave variety. Why had this happened to her? Most people didn’t know that other dimensions existed, and now here she was, in her second one, and she’d not even been back from the first six months. If she’d thought it was about fairness, she might have started moaning about how unfair this was, but perhaps this was just her life – maybe she never got to have a home, and be sane, and have friends and a life and a world of her own. Maybe she’d always be the crazy girl in a new world, and the Powers That Be simply wanted her to be torn away from people she cared about, again and again, until any last remaining shred of her sanity disappeared. It was a wonder that she’d not dissolved into a sobbing mess just yet, really; an alternate dimension, which were the things she feared most, and no Angel around to save her—it was enough to do that. But first, she had to get somewhere safe. Safeish; Fred didn’t think anywhere in this place was safe, because she didn’t know where here was anymore. The security of shutting herself in her own room and choosing not to talk to people was completely different to finding herself in a place with no people in at all. She didn’t like it. She just wanted to go home, and be with people she trusted and not in some strange world where she didn’t know anything (again), because the last five years had pretty much destroyed the old Fred. If she had to spend a long time here, who knew what it would do to her.

She didn’t have time to think about that, though; Fred heard footsteps behind her, and she panicked. Trying to fight back tears, she took off towards the library, running as fast as she could. She didn’t wait to hear the librarian’s explanation, but tore past her, probably knocking the poor lady over in the process, and kept running. If she ran, the thing that wanted to make her a slave wouldn’t catch up to her, and she wouldn’t be crazy old Fred in a sack in a cave again. She didn’t even know if there were caves here; she’d feel safer in a cave. She could hide away from this strange world and start working out those equations that were supposed to take her home again. And this time, she wouldn’t forget that there was a home to go back to; she thought she’d made it up, in Pylea. But she hadn’t, and she wasn’t going to do that this time. She wasn’t going to lose the hope that Angel would save her from this, because he saved people. It was what he did; he was a champion. He was the handsome man who’d saved her from the monsters; even if there were no monsters here yet, and—and Fred found she couldn’t run anymore. She was out of breath and she was crying and the last time she’d felt so alone, she’d just been caught in Pylea and made into a cow-slave. Fred stumbled down one of the aisles, pressing herself into the corner between the wall and the last bookcase, and started pulling books off the shelves so she could hide behind them. Out of curiousity, she looked at which section she was in; physics. She started laughing hysterically – the irony of that was not lost on her – but then her laughs faded and she was back to crying, pulling more and more books off until she was half-buried in them, knees curled tight to her chest and her arms wrapped protectively over her head. “It’s a dream,” she told herself through her muffled sobs, although she didn’t believe that for one second. It wasn’t a dream; yet again, she was in an alternate dimension. “It’s a dream, it’s a dream, it’s gotta be a dream.”

OUT-OF-CHARACTER
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NAME/ALIAS: Becca
AGE: 18
ROLEPLAY EXPERIENCE: Six-ish years
CONTACT: PM
FUN FACT! I also play Fred[/BLOCKQUOTE]

[BUTTERFLIES]

ACCEPTED.

the hammer is my penis.