Helena "Hel" Fury

[Latin For Dragula]

Name: Helena "Hel" Fury
Gender: Genderqueer (assigned male)
Age: 19
Grade: 12th
School: George Hunter High
Hobbies and Interests: Bass guitar, punk rock, streaming, video games, roleplaying, board games, anime and manga, witchcraft and the occult, Chaos Magic

Appearance: Hel measures at 5'11" and 257 lbs. Their hair reaches down to the small of their back and is dyed a dark purple with black highlights. Their face is round and warm with a snub nose and a thin but noticeable scar along their right eyebrow from a childhood accident. Their eyes are hazel green with thin lashes that they treats obsessively with whatever the latest trend they've read about prescribes. Their mouth is somewhat small for their face. There is light beard shadow around their cheeks and chin that quickly turns to stubble if they do not shave. They have a darker Caucasian complexion with a notable faint red irritation around the bridge of their nose and their nostrils that deepens during extended periods of stress.

Their body is pear shaped and chubby wide hips. Their shoulders are wider than average and they have stocky torso with thick arms and legs. Hel has a variety of piercings, ranging through traditional lobe piercings, septum, belly button, and nipple rings, black titanium spider-bites and a lip ring through their lower lip, and a silver pentagram in their tongue. Both of their upper biceps bear large heart-shaped tattoos; the right is inked in the pink, yellow, and light blue of the pansexual flag while the left is inked in the light blues, pinks, and white of the transgender flag, and both are inscribed with the phrase "Hearts Not Parts" in black Angilla Tattoo font. They also have the phrase "Twisted Transistor" tattooed across the small of their back in black Inked Script with red trim, and a Triangle of Solomon around their belly button with the Sacred Names inked in purple Fearless font trimmed in silver and the Parts of Michael inked in the ivy Fearless font trimmed in gold.

On the day of the abduction Hel was made up with thick black eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick, as well as a midnight purple eyeshadow with glitter mixed in. They wore loose blue jeans, a long sleeved blue and black unbuttoned flannel shirt and a white t-shirt with the Pretty Reckless's cross-arrow symbol along the front, with the words "Going To Hell" written across its upper horizontal line. Black and silver heeled cowboy boots were tucked underneath the legs of their jeans, as well as long, purple knee socks.

Biography: Hel is the middle child of Lloyd and Lynette Fury, with their brother Lloyd Jr. being eight years older and their brother Robert being four years younger. They were born on August 1st, 1998, in Millington, Tennessee, and named Ulysses Fury after an uncle. Their father Lloyd, mother Lynette, and brother Lloyd Jr. were all living in the Naval Support Activity Mid-South housing due to their father's long career as a Navy corpsman, though that career had been winding to an end as soon as they learned of their mother's second pregnancy. Two months after they were born they moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, to be closer to Lloyd's childhood hometown of Stockton and Lynette's childhood hometown of California. Lloyd became a nuclear medicine technician at a local hospital, while Lynette would remain a stay-at-home mother, as she had been for much of their marriage.

Hel was assigned male at birth and socialized from early childhood as a cisgender male. They experienced dysphoria from an early age, however; they were frequently drawn to feminine clothing and presentation, often to the dismay of their conservative mother. While their desires were seen as a cute accident as first, they became more concerning to her as they grew from a toddler into a young child who could speak them aloud. Their mother took their frequent requests for dresses, pastels, longer hair, and the like as a childish joke at her expense. These requests always embarrassed her, especially if they were shopping in public, and once she felt she had established that they weren't meant for little boys she was convinced that it was her embarrassment that made Hel ask for them so frequently. Her responses soured from confusion to annoyance to anger, with extreme verbal scoldings about respect, isolated time outs, and harsh spankings being frequent punishments for their expression.

Their father tried a different approach. While he was not often around due to the long hours and frequent call ins of his job, he tried to talk to them about how he felt a growing man ought to behave while providing an example of that behavior. He also encouraged Lloyd Jr. to socialize with them as much as possible; he had already been pulled from the public school system to be homeschooled due to his mother's overprotective concerns about bullying, so they spent much of their day together. Hel and their brother developed a very resentful early relationship due to being forced together. At four and twelve respectively they had very little in common, and while Hel craved their older brother's respect and attention he would often take his frustrations out on them. He was particularly harsh about their non-conforming desires, as when their mother was upset with Hel she would inevitably take it out on him as well, and they were her most frequent trigger. All of this led to Hel repressing many of these desires and having an implicit fear response to similar, more complicated feelings later in life

As Hel grew up they tried to stay quiet not only about their nonconforming desires but their desires in general unless prompted. The birth of their younger brother Robert took much of their mother's attention off of them for the next few years outside of their home-assigned schoolwork, while their father was starting to view them as old enough to introduce to more complex hobbies. Shortly after Hel turned six their father built them their first computer and introduced them to the LAN sessions that he and Lloyd Jr. often held on weekends. While they usually only played with each other, occasionally some of Lloyd Jr.'s old friends from school would be invited over as well. Typically they would play strategy games together that their father enjoyed, such as Starcraft, the Red Alert series, and Rise of Nations, but sometimes after they were supposed to be in bed Hel would sneak down and stay up with their brother and his friends as they played first person shooters and action RPGs that were deemed too adult for Hel to see when their parents were around. This was the first time Hel had interacted with other children aside from relatives at family gatherings and their brothers at home, and while it was intimidating they also found that playing games put them at ease and left their brother treating them more like a peer than a nuisance. Gaming would become an important self care tool for the rest of their life.

The improvements in their relationship with their older brother led them to spending more time together by choice. Lloyd Jr. was an aspiring musician and Hel often spent long afternoons with him listening to him play guitar or to CDs he'd purchased. Much of their taste in music in the future would be shaped by experience rock, metal, punk, and rap artists in their brother's bedroom and associating the closeness and safety of being curled up against him with the songs they loved. Their shared taste in music also led to Lloyd Jr. introducing Hel to AMV culture. Watching fight scenes over some of their favorite songs made them curious about the shows they were taken from; watching episodes of shows like Dragonball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Outlaw Star in Lloyd Jr.'s room would become a regular weekly occurrence.

Over the next few years Hel would start to develop more interests of their own due to having a computer and an internet connection to explore. While their time was limited at first, by the time they were ten years old they were spending much of their time on the computer either for schoolwork or for leisure and this made sneaking internet access under their parents' often-occupied attention easy. Many interests developed out of each other; their family had often played board games together in the past, which led to Hel looking for more online, which led to them discovering tabletop gaming, which led to them developing an interest in mythology and the occult. The latter interest in particular was kept well hidden; their mother was obsessively paranoid about her children being influenced away from her Christian values by other belief systems and tried to carefully regulate what they consumed when she was around. Hel was never very interested in Christianity, however, and found church to be more of a chore than anything else. Tabletop game systems started as an innocuous way to explore the way that fictional characters approach questions of faith and belief, which quickly led to exploring how others approach faith and belief in the real world. While Hel was and still is fascinated by many forms of religion, magic and witchcraft would hold special attention due to both the curiosity that came with their mother's extreme disapproval and the emphasis on self-actualization and femininity they often found alongside it.

This secretive self-focus coupled with the amount of time spent with Lloyd Jr. did come with the drawback that they had little to no relationship with their younger brother Robert. He would often attempt to join his siblings when they were together, but Hel was very protective of their time after they had worked so hard to get it and frequently dismissed him as being too young to understand what they were doing. Hel would be very ashamed of this behavior in the future, especially given that Robert was the same age they were when their father and Lloyd Jr. first started opening up to them. At the time they justified their behavior as waiting for him to grow up and mature more, and that they would have a better relationship when he did.

That option would never be available to them. Hel's increased time on the internet had eventually led to them exploring more and more of their repressed non-conformity and confusion around their gender identity. While they felt loved and accepted by their father and brothers, it still felt extremely uncomfortable and incorrect to think of themselves as a man. Reading about others with similar thoughts led to them discovering the concept of dysphoria, and the transgender community at large. At first they devoured this information, then shamefully cut all contact with it out of fear of discovery. While they hated the thought of being a man, they didn't feel quite right identifying as a woman either. Over the next year they would sink into increasing depression over the idea that they just hated themself, and that they could neither obtain nor deserve comfort about their identity. This frequently left them sullen and drained in their day to day life, and their distant relationship with their mother became increasingly tense as they took their individual struggles out on each other. Finally, Hel blew up during an intense argument about the doubts and insecurities they had been feeling, and how they blamed their mother for many of them, feeling that she'd stolen something from them that they couldn't put to words.

The family would fracture over this argument. Their father didn't understand their feelings but had become increasingly concerned about how negatively they had been acting for the last year, and wanted to let them explore what they felt to find some relief. Their mother, on the other hand, only saw them as being manipulated by outside sources and demanded Hel's internet access be taken away. While their parents had fought before, their strong disagreement about what was best for them tore a rift that they couldn't repair. In the end they would divorce in early 2010, with Lynette, Robert, and Lloyd Jr. taking the home in Jefferson City together. Lloyd was able to make contact with old friends from his time in the Navy and secure both a job at the Chattanooga VA Clinic as a nuclear medicine technician and a place to stay while they found their feet. After a couple months of planning they were able to move to their new home in Chattanooga, TN in the summer of 2010. Hel has not seen their younger brother since the separation, and would not attempt to make contact with either of their siblings for many years out of fear of rejection.

Lloyd did his best to support Hel through the rough moving period. He struggled with his own intensifying depression and feelings of inadequacy due to the loss of his wife and other children, but taking care of Hel became his coping mechanism; together they were able to find a LGBTQ+ friendly therapist for Hel to discuss their feelings with and start finding small ways to destigmatize their expression. On their twelfth birthday he bought them their first dress. It was the wrong size and ill-fitted to the point that they couldn't get it on, but it was a gesture that has stuck in Hel's mind as one of the most formative shows of acceptance they have ever received, and the dress still hangs in their closet.

The move to Chattanooga also led to Hel entering public school for the very first time in their life. They found the environment to be extremely loud and overwhelming, and spent much of middle school trying to go unnoticed. They continued to present male with a lean towards androgynous clothing, though they had begun growing out their hair. They did not have much of a social life in school, but did passingly well with their schoolwork, most frequently getting Bs with the occasional C. Their struggles with interacting in person led them to lean more heavily on their friend groups online, where they could present however they wanted without questions. While they had a number of close relationships their closest was with Kara Breen, who they had met through an online roleplaying community and would talk to daily. Kara became their closest confidante and a constant source of encouragement as they sorted out their identity.

Hel's other interests would grow more prominent through this period. Much of their time was spent alone thanks to their father's long work hours to support both them as well as alimony and child support payments for Robert to their mother, so they did their best to occupy themself. Many nights they would just play video games alone or with friends online, but they also got involved with small roleplaying groups for everything from live tabletop to play by post to freeform games and tried to get involved with online communities for discussing anime and manga. It helped them feel connected without all the inherent pressure of trying to deal with people in person, which in turn helped them explore their personality now that they were being more genuine with themself. On the nights where their father was home and free, they would usually make dinner and watch a movie together, or play, a two person board or card game. On rare occasions, Lloyd would play bass guitar for Hel. While he hadn't played for years prior to the separation, he knew that music was important to them and wanted to share something personal. Eventually he would begin to teach them what he knew, and they would add practicing bass to their list of coping activities when they were alone.

Before Hel entered high school, they had a series of sessions with their therapist and their father. At the time it was agreed that Hel's feelings were consistent those of a transgender woman, and that transitioning to present female would be the best course of action for them. However, they were afraid of starting transition while also starting their first year of high school. Waiting until after high school seemed to be an even worse option. It was agreed that Hel would be homeschooled another year while they began hormone therapy and legally change their name. While this plan was well-intentioned, Lloyd did not have the time or energy to homeschool them on top of everything else. They did their best together, but in the end it was decided that Hel should repeat the year in public school now that they were in a more comfortable position.

Starting high school more confident in their identity, despite their lingering questions, had a very positive impact on Hel's ability to socialize. They were much more confident both in themself and their interests, and while they were not unusually outgoing they were able to make connections like their best friends and eventual bandmates Andy Silverman and Axel Fontaine. Andy and Hel treated each other as close siblings, while Axel would become their largest crush in the years that followed. Their band has rarely been more than an excuse to get together, drink, and smoke in-between practicing, but Hel is happy to have them in their life. Hel has always believed that their underage drinking and growing weed habit is completely hidden from their father. In reality Lloyd has known for nearly as long as it's been going on, but between his desire to see Hel happy and his lack of energy for confrontation he chooses not to make an issue of it as long as they are safe and don't do anything reckless.

This confidence also led to Hel being more bold with their other interests. At 17 they started playing with the idea of becoming a professional streamer. At first they treated it as a roleplaying experience, trying to act and speak as if they were in front of an audience whenever they played games alone. Over time they started recording themselves, then streaming once a week for a couple of hours, and today they maintain a modest but dedicated schedule of streaming at least four nights a week as well as maintaining YouTube and Twitter accounts to promote their work and engage with their few fans. They are not popular enough that they can consider streaming their job, but it does allow them extra spending money and they believe if they keep working at it they could eventually support themselves with no other income.

Hel's interest in witchcraft has grown from a hobby to a belief system during their years in high school. They have become fascinated with Chaos Magic as a method of self-care and practices what is known as the information model of its teachings on a daily basis. In broad strokes they believe that ritualizing your desires and expecting them to happen makes them more likely to be fulfilled, while expecting failure does the same. While they aren't certain they actually believe they're affecting reality, they find that this way of thinking helps them manage their own negative feelings, forcing them into a more positive state of mind.

Hel is generally well liked at school and has a large circle of casual acquaintances in addition to their close friends. They have been trying to push into having more and more in person relationships and opening up more of themself to others. Much of their identity is still very private, however; while they do actively participant in the LGBTQ+ community both in school and around Chattanooga, they are only openly out to close friends and trusted members of the community. They live stealth at school, having presented female since they arrived. Hel changes for gym in the bathrooms adjacent to the school locker room, citing insecurity about their weight to any who question them. In addition a few of their closest friends such as Andy and Axel know that after continued therapy and questioning they are most comfortable identifying themself as non-binary. Hel is extremely self-conscious about their identity and worries in their darkest moods it's something they made up to try and feel better, so they do not discuss it often even among those closest to them.

The most notable development in Hel's social life is their long distance relationship with Kara Breen, who they began dating early on in senior year. While they were good friends for years and dating seemed like a natural extension of that when Kara confessed her feelings to them, Hel is frequently uncomfortable in the relationship and feels this makes them a bad person. They find Kara to be jealous and spiteful whenever they are not spending time together, and they are frequently accused of lying about where they've been or cheating on her. While Hel knows this is a destructive relationship that they need to end, they don't know how to stop without hurting her back and they can't bring themself to take that step. This is further complicated over guilt with their coping mechanisms; when Kara upsets them they nearly always seek comfort from Axel, which Hel fears is probably some form of emotional cheating.

Despite the other demands on their attention Hel's family life has also been improving. Lloyd Jr. reached out to them after he graduated high school and longer had their mother in his life; while he struggles to understand Hel's identity much of the time, he supports them and wants to be an active part of their life. He visits Lloyd and Hel at home every few months and is well known to all of their close friends. While Hel has not seen Robert since the separation, they have recently reconnected via an email passed along by Lloyd Jr. Their communication is infrequent and very careful as Lynette is much more careful with Robert's internet access and does not want either Hel or Lloyd Sr.'s influence in his life, but they have begun reconciling Hel's rejection of him when they were younger. When Robert can leave home without supervision they share an occasional phone call, but both are fearful of being discovered on the phone by their mother and never call when she could find them. Hel has attempted to reach out to their mother, but she refuses to speak with them.

Currently, Hel's future is hard for them to picture. They would like to continue to grow their fanbase and try to become a professional streamer long term, but there is some fear that that is an unrealistic goal, as is any attempt to turn their band into anything more than another reason to hang out together. However, they struggle with motivating themself through school work and still achieve only passable grades with no interest in pursuing college whatsoever. Right now they are focused on the present and have decided that dealing with the future can wait until after graduation.

Advantages: Hel is a non-threatening and well known figure around school; they have few real enemies and many people they would trust as friends and allies, so it is unlikely they'll ever be alone for long. They have a large variety of coping mechanisms for negative thoughts and feelings, which may make them better equipped to handle the game's stress than their peers. Their streaming career has given them a lot of experience talking to people both friendly and hostile while maintaining a calm, professional attitude, which could help them smooth out conflicts they encounter.
Disadvantages: Hel is overweight and lives a sedentary lifestyle. They have no ability to catch or outrun their classmates and would be easily overpowered in most fights. They are also too trusting; while they are very private about the personal details of their life, they are drawn towards the approval of others and want everyone to be happy with them, which may lead to making risky or unwise decisions to preserve that happiness. Their generally inoffensive and friendly reputation might make opportunistic players see them as an easy target, leading them to act more aggressively than they would otherwise.