Player
Name: Pur
Username: purple_drake
Current/former characters: None

Sleeper
Character: Gabriel/Trickster
Username: trickntreats
Canon: Supernatural
Canon point: After Hammer of the gods, episode 5.19.
Age: Since almost the beginning of time, except that he’s younger than the other Archangels—Michael, Raphael and Lucifer. In-game he’ll be, oh, say, 37.

Appearance: Gabriel is 5'8", in-between slender and stocky, with brown hair, amber eyes and decently nondescript features. His face is one very inclined toward smiles and smirks, while his eyes tend toward intensity, seeing as how they belong to an archangel and all. At first glance his bearing is relaxed, lazy and that of a joker, but it’s the kind of relaxation belonging someone who doesn’t have to fear … well, anything. He presents himself as extroverted and open almost as a cover—almost. It’s more like a mask that has become so ingrained that the lines between mask and truth are blurred.

Recently the mask has cracked, which has left Gabriel with the air of being somewhat more … present than his whimsical nonchalance of before.

His clothes tend to take the form of guises—he wears what the character he’s posing as wears; eg, Dr Sexy. When he’s not pretend he’s generally wearing casuals—jeans, shirt, jacket. The things an every-man would wear.

Personality: Gabriel can be described in a nutshell as passive, loving, bitter and stupidly powerful. And that combination of traits leads him to being a bundle of other things he’s only just starting to break out of. Things like being something of a coward, pretending so hard that he’s almost lost sight of what he was, appreciative of things he never would have been otherwise, and ultimately with a good eye on what’s actually important.

Of all the angels, he chose the hardest road—he actively chose not to fight because he didn’t want to be involved with killing his own siblings. He was even willing to leave Heaven—to Fall—for the sake of not fighting. On the one hand, it’s actually a pretty noble sentiment; he loved his family so much that he simply refused to take part in the conflict, thus resigning himself to a life of never reconciling with either side. He stood up for peace. On the other hand, this trait can and does lead into cowardice. Even when his brothers are doing something wrong and he knows it, he refuses at first to stand up against them, even though he could be one of the few to stop them and thus save many others from suffering.

His bitterness is what warped and channelled his feelings into judgement. He felt he couldn’t pass judgement on his brothers, so he passed judgement on people instead. And being the stupidly powerful being he was, he had free rein. He could do it because he wanted to. He could choose not to fight because he wanted to … or not want to, as the case may be. With his bitterness, he could pretend that none of it was his fault and there was nothing he could do.

With his bitterness he created his masks. Although I think he would have been pretty playful from the beginning, the bitterness twisted it into humiliating (at best) and cruel (at worst) pranks. The interesting thing to note about Gabriel is that, through the whole of the series, he never uses his trademarks. He uses the Trickster’s, and Lucifer later claims to have taught him all his tricks. It’s like he’s trying to leave who he was behind—the messenger, the diplomat, who failed to solve the most important conflict of his life. He became the Trickster to such an extent that it was the only way he knew to try and beat his brother, and he failed.

That said, by his canon-point he had started to break out of some of his masks. He’d admitted his reasons for being on Earth. He admitted he loved humanity. He passed judgement, at last, on the right person—on Lucifer. At that point, he’s not completely free of the Trickster, but he’s starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel which says that he can damn well choose to stand up for the things he actually believes in, and doesn’t have to subscribe to being only someone else’s messenger. He’s accepting free will, after centuries of wallowing, and the fact that he can make a difference.

That, I think, would be one of the major things about his characterisation in Diamond City. He finally stood up for his choices and got killed for it, and now he’s going to be in a place where he’s locked into a life very much like the one he led, with the powers he used the most. I think on one hand he might enjoy being able to sit back and relax without the Armageddon hanging over his head. On the other hand, I think he’ll chafe with the fact that the powers he does have are now the ones he has spent so long pretending were always his and weren’t. Above all, I think he’ll want to know the secrets behind the Cave and the City, just because he finally took back his autonomy and he’ll be damned if he hands it over to someone else, thank you very much.

History: zomg for once Pur can link a summarised wikied history! … And then of course Pur will clarify with headcanon.

Gabriel was the fourth of four archangels created by God way back when, which makes him one of the oldest beings in the universe and one of only four (he and his brothers) who had even seen God in person. He served as God’s messenger to other angels and the worlds below, which meant that he saw many of his fellow angels more often than his older brothers did. He was playful, but a musician even more than most of the Host.

Of course, being the youngest of the archangels, he rather hero-worshipped his older brothers and got on particularly well with Lucifer. The two of them were the more mischievous of the archangels, and Lucifer’s influence encouraged Gabriel towards tricks and pranks. But unlike Lucifer, Gabriel saw enough of his younger siblings and his father’s creations not to hold himself as superior. Instead he spent time watching them and playing with them, and as a result got to know them. Over the course of these untold years, Gabriel had no reason to be unhappy.

And then God created humans. At first Gabriel was nothing but curious and kinda pleased, but it soon became clear that his older bro Lucifer was Not Pleased At All. Gabriel wasn’t a warrior, and the sudden tension and conflict among his brothers made him anxious and wary. When it exploded into actual fighting, Gabriel remained as apart as he possibly could—save when he delivered God’s message to Michael to cast Lucifer down.

The conflict and that message changed his outlook somewhat. Gabriel closed off somewhat and—perhaps to keep the memory of Lucifer as they’d known him alive—began using the tricks Lucifer had taught him to tease and taunt. He still obeyed, but as far as he was concerned there was a great gaping hole in Heaven. As an archangel, he knew enough of the future to know the identities of those it would come down to—Dean and Sam Winchester.

It was Michael who finally made him snap. When God sent His Son to Earth to save humanity, all Gabriel heard from Michael was bitchbitchbitch about why it couldn’t be him who got to infiltrate Hell and give Satan a whooping.

That was when Gabriel threw up his hands and left Heaven. He didn’t want to hear anything about how awful his fallen brothers were, didn’t want to be reminded of how his family had been split, didn’t want to fight either side. And he happened to like humans, sort of like how people like a cute little puppy, so he went to hide among them in his own private ‘witness protection’.

In that time he ingratiated himself with pagan gods, claiming to be Loki, and went on a wild trip of passing out just desserts to anyone he felt deserved it. He left behind his angelic duties and became a trickster instead—with the bonus that he couldn’t be killed like one—sampling all the things humanity had to offer. And some things some gods had to offer. Like Kali, the chick who’s all hands. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

He spent so long avoiding either of his brothers’ sides that it went entirely unnoticed that he was starting to like humanity in a more than ‘cute little puppy’ sense. Of course, he was only avoiding the fight, avoiding taking sides, and as time went on and wars got worse, well, obviously that just meant that Dad had left the building.

Eventually Gabriel just wanted it all to end and all the fighting to stop.

When Dean and Sam rocked up in the town where Gabriel was loitering and passing judgement, he knew instantly who they were and couldn’t resist playing with them. Maybe there was some bitterness involved; after all, they were the mooks who were going to ensure that, no matter what, one of his big brothers was going to die. So he ‘tested their mettle’, as it were, and kept an eye on them.

About a year later Gabriel felt irritated enough to intervene again. Dean was on the road to Hell, but Sam just wouldn’t stop trying to save him. And that annoyed Gabriel. A lot. Who were they to try and stop Armageddon?

Obviously, the best course of action was to beat it into Sam’s head that Dean was unsaveable—by putting him in a time-loop and making him watch Dean die over and over … and over. Even Gabriel was getting bored by the time they outed him, so he stopped the loop.

The next day Dean was killed anyway, and Gabriel watched Sam degenerate into a robot-man trying to find him. Not that Gabriel cared, of course. Not that Sam’s loyalty struck any raw nerves at all.

The best choice here was clearly to lure Sam into a confrontation by making him think he’d killed Bobby Singer, and then beat the message into Sam’s head with words. Dean couldn’t be saved.

Except that Sam wouldn’t shut up and stop begging on behalf of his brother. That, Gabriel couldn’t handle either. He threw in the towel and turned time back to the morning after the timeloop day, and the Winchesters went on their merry way. Gabriel steamed, pretended that sore points hadn’t been touched, and carried on handing out his just desserts.

Dean went to Hell. Sam freed Lucifer. The world was on the tracks for Armageddon, when finally, finally, all the fighting would be over, and the Winchester mooks were absolutely refusing to play ball by agreeing to be Michael and Lucifer’s vessels. So once again, Gabriel decided he needed to beat some heads in to get a message through. This one involved ‘playing your roles’ and locked up the Winchesters in TV Land, forcing them into roles in TV shows.

That was when he actually let on that the Winchesters were striking raw nerves. The first time he came face-to-face with a brother, Castiel. Dean trash-talking Michael and Lucifer. Now if only Castiel hadn’t let on to the Winchesters that he wasn’t a trickster, and maybe things would have been just peachy.

They weren’t. Dean and Sam trapped Gabriel in a circle of lit Holy Oil. Gabriel dropped the charade and told them who he was, let down all the masks. He just wanted it over. In return Dean accused him of just being too much of a coward to stand up to his family, turned on the sprinkler, and left.

And Gabriel had things to think about. Not that he actually thought about them. Oh, no. The Winchesters couldn’t possibly have a point. And their dedication to each other was pathetic, not touching.

Even still, when the pagan gods trapped the Winchesters in a hotel on a desolate highway with intent to lure Michael and Lucifer in, Gabriel objected. It was neither the place nor the time, and it was a stupid idea anyway because the other gods didn’t stand a chance. He arrived at the meeting in his guise as Loki, prepared to help Dean and Sam escape so they could get on with fulfilling the prophecy the right way.

Kali managed to trap him with a blood spell and outed him as Gabriel to the other gods, but when she stabbed him with his archangel’s blade he … well, didn’t die, because the blade was a fake. He used that sham to escape, remaining only long enough to warn Dean to get the Hell out of dodge because the blade was a fake. And therefore they couldn’t kill Lucifer with it.

Who had kind of … picked that moment to show up. Gabriel bailed.

But he didn’t get far. Because the Winchesters, despite everything, had hammered some pretty big chinks in that armour he’d been wearing, reminded him that not only did he love his brothers, but he loved humanity too. That despite Dean’s utter hypocrisy in asking him to kill his brother, Gabriel didn’t actually want humanity to die.

And that Gabriel, no matter what, was an archangel.

So he made a tape for the Winchesters, a ‘just in case’ thing telling them how to win—well, put Lucifer back—if he got himself killed, and then he went to stand up to Lucifer for the first time in … ever.

Gabriel told Lucy that he was a great big bag of dicks having a temper tantrum over the new baby. And that he, Gabriel, loved the new baby, thanks very much, so Lucy could try and kill them over his dead body.

And of course he got himself killed. With his own sword. How d’you like them apples.