TLV Application
Jan. 25th, 2026 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hollywoodghoulCW: Cannibalism, drug use,
User Name/Nick: Kota
User DW: waningsunflower
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
waningsunflower or Discord: waningsunflower
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Sheehan, Sym, Abaurycy, Iago
Character Name: Cooper Howard aka “The Ghoul”
Series: Fallout
Age: 240ish
From When?: Season 2, episode 2 - The Golden Rule. While he survives the radscorpions in canon, I am gently AUing that after Lucy leaves him after their attack, he doesn’t heal quickly enough and is killed by another creature.
Inmate Justification: Cooper is a broken soul. He was once a good man, but he lost that when the world fell apart. The day the bombs dropped, he became a ghoul, and his sole reason for living was to find his wife and daughter. This meant that he became a bounty hunter, doing what he could to survive, even if that meant taking the lives of other people.
Arrival: Against his will
Abilities/Powers: He has the standard ghoul biological advantages, like immunity to radiation and even using radiation to heal. He doesn't age and he can lose body parts without really thinking about it. He does try and sew those back on, though. There’s only a few spare parts to go around! He is immune to most illnesses and can survive without nutrients for a long time. He can eat most anything (not having a nose means he doesn’t really taste) and does, in fact, happily resort to cannibalism if the need arises. He is highly resistant to alcohol and drugs.
He’s a crack shot with a gun and has a lot of general fighting abilities.
Inmate Information:
Before the bombs fell, Cooper Howard was a war veteran and a celebrated Western film actor. Onscreen, he was charismatic, patriotic (anti-Communist), and greatly admired. His public image was built on those idealistic American virtues like rugged individualism, frontier justice, and strict morality. And when his role in these films began to clash with those views and that morality, he spoke up. When they wanted him to shoot a man in cold blood onscreen, he initially refused before giving in.
However, this image increasingly conflicted with his private life as he began to work with Vault-Tec through his wife who was a high-level executive. The most important pre-War event in Cooper’s life is his discovery that Vault-Tec is not just preparing for nuclear war but actively trying to usher it in. This revelation destroys a faith in America and the systems he had maintained and created for his entire life. His subsequent separation from Barb is one of morality, despite the fact that they both want to keep Janey safe.. He refuses to accept her logic that she just wanted to save her, that Barb was acting in the best interest of the family. This fracture marks Cooper’s first true disillusionment.
The Great War takes everything that grounded Cooper to himself. It took his career, his family, and his humanity in a very literal sense. The radiation exposure of the bombs turns him into a ghoul, an outcast and an immortal with a very high price.
In the Wasteland Cooper abandons his name and goes simply by “the Ghoul.” He loses himself and that idealistic person and becomes something much worse.
He’s a bounty hunter and, as such, murders for a living. While you might be able to argue that some of the people are criminals and/or do harm to others (hard to say what a criminal is when crime is a very loose term), his actions are not governed by any sort of restraint. He summarily executes people for petty reasons or really no reason other than they were in his way. He collects money and loot from their corpses and moves on to the next target. And while he doesn’t really believe in torture for a purpose, he does use tortuous tactics to get what he wants - like trying to drown Lucy to make her bait and tormenting her in the desert by refusing to give her water or making her drink from filthy puddles.
Beyond the obvious, Cooper repeatedly exploits others’ trust - usually Lucy’s. He constantly manipulates her, uses her as leverage when he needs drugs, and up and abandons her when she stops being useful. While he occasionally intervenes to keep her alive, he does so because he needs her alive, not because he feels any moral obligation to keep her that way. He doesn’t really care about her life, even after she comes back to save him from himself.
He eagerly participates in grave-robbing, random violence, and even cannibalism and while he calls it survival, it’s really selfishness and the choice to put himself above anyone else.
Cooper’s defining trait is absolute and profound cynicism. Cooper might claim that he does what he does out of necessity or, as above, survival. However, that’s not actually the case. Cooper has been betrayed at the very highest level. By his wife. By his bosses. By the very government he fought for. He knows the truth about the Wasteland and it isn’t a pretty truth. He cannot trust, and he automatically assumes that everyone is out for themselves. Those who aren’t, like Lucy, are simply stupid or will be exactly like him one day. He almost hopes for it.
Cooper also leans into a theatrical and almost mocking sort of cruelty. He’s an actor, and that doesn’t stop just because he was turned into a kind of monster. He performs violence like a man on the screen. If he can control the choreography, then he can control the situation. It also ensures that he maintains an emotional detachment from the situation, making it easier to just destroy people like tissue paper. He wields sarcasm and cruelty like shields, protecting him from the outside world. Unfortunately, Cooper, the real Cooper, is still inside. Even though he tells everyone who will listen that he no longer cares, Cooper does form attachments, most obviously to Lucy and Dogmeat. These bonds are unstable and he denies them when they happen. When those rare moments of empathy surface, he does everything that he can to tamp down on them.
Path to Redemption:
Cooper doesn’t require redemption in the more shallow sense of becoming a kinder, gentler, or less capable of violence ghoul. What he needs is a fundamental reset of how he relates to other people and how he sees morality. He has spent two hundred years undoing a strict moral code that gave him a beautiful life. And while that mindset allowed him to survive the wasteland, it also kept him from taking accountability. Any meaningful redemption, meant to stick, would require him to embrace the idea that morality does matter even when it offers no immediate payout or benefit to himself.
Cooper does not merely distrust the systems or the country or people; he distrusts hope itself. That strict cynicism allows him to intellectualize grief, guilt, and attachment by simply telling himself that the person is stupid or naive. The problem with that thought process is that redemption means that he has to actually feel feelings and not turn those feelings into cruelty and mockery and anger. Cooper understands systemic evil and corporate greed better than most, and he is not wrong about hating or putting blame on Vault-Tec or the pre-War world that practically enabled it. But redemption requires him to accept that recognizing the faulty system does not absolve him of what he chose to do within it.
Cooper’s earliest response to the Barge (beyond the initial moment of disorientation and drug-seeking) would be hostility disguised as compliance. The Barge is just another Vault - another cruel experiment dressed up in a pretty bow. He will be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the water to go out. The Admiral/Overseer to lose his shit and kill everyone. Normal Vault things. His instinct would be to probe for weaknesses, test limits, manipulate rules, and provoke the wardens, not out of sadism (mostly) but as a survival reflex. Only by trying to understand the power hierarchy, like in the wasteland, will he find control. The other inmates and wardens are just factions. Everything makes sense again. But when those efforts inevitably fail, his defenses would begin to break down. Anger, grief, and old guilt would surface, likely expressed through regression, cruelty, or attempts to disengage from his warden or any attachments he might have made. This would be a critical and dangerous phase, as it is when he is most likely to sabotage his own progress.
Over time, if the environment remains consistent and resistant to both his aggression and his charm, Cooper would move toward reluctant engagement. He will never become openly receptive to graduation or redemption, but there will be changes. Mockery would give way to silence, resistance to participation, and then quiet action. He needs to realize the pattern of choices that make up his worldview can change.
Cooper does not respond to being led, corrected, or enlightened by anyone, least of all someone coming along to call himself his keeper. Any warden who presents themselves as ethically or morally superior will trigger defiance and withdrawal. He responds far better to those who impose clear boundaries without issuing commands, and who maintain consistency rather than attempting constant persuasion. He does not need to be convinced that cruelty is wrong. He knows that it is and he does it anyway. He needs to be placed in situations where the ethical choice cannot be avoided and where he can see what happens when he makes that choice.
Cooper understands causality deeply, so a warden who focuses on concrete consequences rather than abstract moral condemnation will work better. He is also more receptive to wardens who acknowledge their own moral compromises, not to center themselves but to blur that line between warden and inmate. It’s very important that trust be gained very slowly. For example, immediate forgiveness will feel dishonest to him and reinforce his belief that morality is shallow and performative.
Floods that elicit forced confessions or attempts to extract vulnerability will be interpreted as control mechanisms and met with violence, resistance, and/or emotional shutdown, so any warden will need to be aware of that.
As far as techniques, shame and embarrassment is perhaps the worst approach for a warden. Cooper already believes that he is irreparably damaged and that he cannot change and should not be allowed to be given the chance.The most effective methods for reaching him involve choices and responsibilities without coercion. Presenting him with situations where every available option carries ethical weight forces him to engage without being directed. Drawing on his past as an actor can also be effective. For example, asking him to articulate who he believes himself to be and how that identity has shifted over time would be a good thought experiment for him later on in his redemption. Giving him a job that requires care while denying him true authority directly challenges his tendency to believe that responsibility is the same as control. Just as importantly, silence can be a powerful tool for a potential warden. Cooper often processes more in quiet observation than confrontation, and restraint on the part of a warden is essential.
Cooper Howard, the Ghoul, is not the sort of inmate who will graduate quickly. Even on the Barge with the help of a warden and the Admiral, his progress will be slow, uneven, and probably really discouraging to anyone who is watching. But if redemption is more or less the continued choice to reduce harm despite how he feels and despite the world being an absolute shithole, then he is capable of it. His graduation will be the moment he realizes that he no longer needs to believe the world is irredeemable in order to endure living in it.
History: History
Sample Network Entry:/Sample RP: TDM sample
Special Notes:
The Ghoul uses an unspecified drug in order to keep away what’s known as “feralization.” It’s when ghouls lose their minds and become more like mindless killing machines. The drug is highly addictive, however he needs it or he will suffer withdrawals (and also risk becoming feral). I’d like to assume that enough of it is in the infirmary like any other drug. I can play with shortages or whatever if the plot/needs arise!
I also will have him come in semi-feral, since his injury would prevent him from being able to take it as he needs before dying. This can be reversed with the drug or someone killing him.
User Name/Nick: Kota
User DW: waningsunflower
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Sheehan, Sym, Abaurycy, Iago
Character Name: Cooper Howard aka “The Ghoul”
Series: Fallout
Age: 240ish
From When?: Season 2, episode 2 - The Golden Rule. While he survives the radscorpions in canon, I am gently AUing that after Lucy leaves him after their attack, he doesn’t heal quickly enough and is killed by another creature.
Inmate Justification: Cooper is a broken soul. He was once a good man, but he lost that when the world fell apart. The day the bombs dropped, he became a ghoul, and his sole reason for living was to find his wife and daughter. This meant that he became a bounty hunter, doing what he could to survive, even if that meant taking the lives of other people.
Arrival: Against his will
Abilities/Powers: He has the standard ghoul biological advantages, like immunity to radiation and even using radiation to heal. He doesn't age and he can lose body parts without really thinking about it. He does try and sew those back on, though. There’s only a few spare parts to go around! He is immune to most illnesses and can survive without nutrients for a long time. He can eat most anything (not having a nose means he doesn’t really taste) and does, in fact, happily resort to cannibalism if the need arises. He is highly resistant to alcohol and drugs.
He’s a crack shot with a gun and has a lot of general fighting abilities.
Inmate Information:
Before the bombs fell, Cooper Howard was a war veteran and a celebrated Western film actor. Onscreen, he was charismatic, patriotic (anti-Communist), and greatly admired. His public image was built on those idealistic American virtues like rugged individualism, frontier justice, and strict morality. And when his role in these films began to clash with those views and that morality, he spoke up. When they wanted him to shoot a man in cold blood onscreen, he initially refused before giving in.
However, this image increasingly conflicted with his private life as he began to work with Vault-Tec through his wife who was a high-level executive. The most important pre-War event in Cooper’s life is his discovery that Vault-Tec is not just preparing for nuclear war but actively trying to usher it in. This revelation destroys a faith in America and the systems he had maintained and created for his entire life. His subsequent separation from Barb is one of morality, despite the fact that they both want to keep Janey safe.. He refuses to accept her logic that she just wanted to save her, that Barb was acting in the best interest of the family. This fracture marks Cooper’s first true disillusionment.
The Great War takes everything that grounded Cooper to himself. It took his career, his family, and his humanity in a very literal sense. The radiation exposure of the bombs turns him into a ghoul, an outcast and an immortal with a very high price.
In the Wasteland Cooper abandons his name and goes simply by “the Ghoul.” He loses himself and that idealistic person and becomes something much worse.
He’s a bounty hunter and, as such, murders for a living. While you might be able to argue that some of the people are criminals and/or do harm to others (hard to say what a criminal is when crime is a very loose term), his actions are not governed by any sort of restraint. He summarily executes people for petty reasons or really no reason other than they were in his way. He collects money and loot from their corpses and moves on to the next target. And while he doesn’t really believe in torture for a purpose, he does use tortuous tactics to get what he wants - like trying to drown Lucy to make her bait and tormenting her in the desert by refusing to give her water or making her drink from filthy puddles.
Beyond the obvious, Cooper repeatedly exploits others’ trust - usually Lucy’s. He constantly manipulates her, uses her as leverage when he needs drugs, and up and abandons her when she stops being useful. While he occasionally intervenes to keep her alive, he does so because he needs her alive, not because he feels any moral obligation to keep her that way. He doesn’t really care about her life, even after she comes back to save him from himself.
He eagerly participates in grave-robbing, random violence, and even cannibalism and while he calls it survival, it’s really selfishness and the choice to put himself above anyone else.
Cooper’s defining trait is absolute and profound cynicism. Cooper might claim that he does what he does out of necessity or, as above, survival. However, that’s not actually the case. Cooper has been betrayed at the very highest level. By his wife. By his bosses. By the very government he fought for. He knows the truth about the Wasteland and it isn’t a pretty truth. He cannot trust, and he automatically assumes that everyone is out for themselves. Those who aren’t, like Lucy, are simply stupid or will be exactly like him one day. He almost hopes for it.
Cooper also leans into a theatrical and almost mocking sort of cruelty. He’s an actor, and that doesn’t stop just because he was turned into a kind of monster. He performs violence like a man on the screen. If he can control the choreography, then he can control the situation. It also ensures that he maintains an emotional detachment from the situation, making it easier to just destroy people like tissue paper. He wields sarcasm and cruelty like shields, protecting him from the outside world. Unfortunately, Cooper, the real Cooper, is still inside. Even though he tells everyone who will listen that he no longer cares, Cooper does form attachments, most obviously to Lucy and Dogmeat. These bonds are unstable and he denies them when they happen. When those rare moments of empathy surface, he does everything that he can to tamp down on them.
Path to Redemption:
Cooper doesn’t require redemption in the more shallow sense of becoming a kinder, gentler, or less capable of violence ghoul. What he needs is a fundamental reset of how he relates to other people and how he sees morality. He has spent two hundred years undoing a strict moral code that gave him a beautiful life. And while that mindset allowed him to survive the wasteland, it also kept him from taking accountability. Any meaningful redemption, meant to stick, would require him to embrace the idea that morality does matter even when it offers no immediate payout or benefit to himself.
Cooper does not merely distrust the systems or the country or people; he distrusts hope itself. That strict cynicism allows him to intellectualize grief, guilt, and attachment by simply telling himself that the person is stupid or naive. The problem with that thought process is that redemption means that he has to actually feel feelings and not turn those feelings into cruelty and mockery and anger. Cooper understands systemic evil and corporate greed better than most, and he is not wrong about hating or putting blame on Vault-Tec or the pre-War world that practically enabled it. But redemption requires him to accept that recognizing the faulty system does not absolve him of what he chose to do within it.
Cooper’s earliest response to the Barge (beyond the initial moment of disorientation and drug-seeking) would be hostility disguised as compliance. The Barge is just another Vault - another cruel experiment dressed up in a pretty bow. He will be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the water to go out. The Admiral/Overseer to lose his shit and kill everyone. Normal Vault things. His instinct would be to probe for weaknesses, test limits, manipulate rules, and provoke the wardens, not out of sadism (mostly) but as a survival reflex. Only by trying to understand the power hierarchy, like in the wasteland, will he find control. The other inmates and wardens are just factions. Everything makes sense again. But when those efforts inevitably fail, his defenses would begin to break down. Anger, grief, and old guilt would surface, likely expressed through regression, cruelty, or attempts to disengage from his warden or any attachments he might have made. This would be a critical and dangerous phase, as it is when he is most likely to sabotage his own progress.
Over time, if the environment remains consistent and resistant to both his aggression and his charm, Cooper would move toward reluctant engagement. He will never become openly receptive to graduation or redemption, but there will be changes. Mockery would give way to silence, resistance to participation, and then quiet action. He needs to realize the pattern of choices that make up his worldview can change.
Cooper does not respond to being led, corrected, or enlightened by anyone, least of all someone coming along to call himself his keeper. Any warden who presents themselves as ethically or morally superior will trigger defiance and withdrawal. He responds far better to those who impose clear boundaries without issuing commands, and who maintain consistency rather than attempting constant persuasion. He does not need to be convinced that cruelty is wrong. He knows that it is and he does it anyway. He needs to be placed in situations where the ethical choice cannot be avoided and where he can see what happens when he makes that choice.
Cooper understands causality deeply, so a warden who focuses on concrete consequences rather than abstract moral condemnation will work better. He is also more receptive to wardens who acknowledge their own moral compromises, not to center themselves but to blur that line between warden and inmate. It’s very important that trust be gained very slowly. For example, immediate forgiveness will feel dishonest to him and reinforce his belief that morality is shallow and performative.
Floods that elicit forced confessions or attempts to extract vulnerability will be interpreted as control mechanisms and met with violence, resistance, and/or emotional shutdown, so any warden will need to be aware of that.
As far as techniques, shame and embarrassment is perhaps the worst approach for a warden. Cooper already believes that he is irreparably damaged and that he cannot change and should not be allowed to be given the chance.The most effective methods for reaching him involve choices and responsibilities without coercion. Presenting him with situations where every available option carries ethical weight forces him to engage without being directed. Drawing on his past as an actor can also be effective. For example, asking him to articulate who he believes himself to be and how that identity has shifted over time would be a good thought experiment for him later on in his redemption. Giving him a job that requires care while denying him true authority directly challenges his tendency to believe that responsibility is the same as control. Just as importantly, silence can be a powerful tool for a potential warden. Cooper often processes more in quiet observation than confrontation, and restraint on the part of a warden is essential.
Cooper Howard, the Ghoul, is not the sort of inmate who will graduate quickly. Even on the Barge with the help of a warden and the Admiral, his progress will be slow, uneven, and probably really discouraging to anyone who is watching. But if redemption is more or less the continued choice to reduce harm despite how he feels and despite the world being an absolute shithole, then he is capable of it. His graduation will be the moment he realizes that he no longer needs to believe the world is irredeemable in order to endure living in it.
History: History
Sample Network Entry:/Sample RP: TDM sample
Special Notes:
The Ghoul uses an unspecified drug in order to keep away what’s known as “feralization.” It’s when ghouls lose their minds and become more like mindless killing machines. The drug is highly addictive, however he needs it or he will suffer withdrawals (and also risk becoming feral). I’d like to assume that enough of it is in the infirmary like any other drug. I can play with shortages or whatever if the plot/needs arise!
I also will have him come in semi-feral, since his injury would prevent him from being able to take it as he needs before dying. This can be reversed with the drug or someone killing him.
