lastvoyages

[14thcommander]

User Name: Senri
User DW: sushiflop
E-mail: undead.invader (at) gmail
Other Characters: n/a

Character Name: Zoe Hange
Series: Attack on Titan
Age: ~37
From When?: Ch115, shortly after she leaps into the river with her comrade Levi to save his life

Inmate/Warden: Warden. Hange has a lot of life experience and has changed drastically over the course of her life, beginning as a person motivated by rage and hatred and transforming herself into a driven, determined, cheerful person who seems to find reserves of personal strength every time she digs down in herself. It's not to say that her rage and hatred necessarily disappeared, but that she swapped from being controlled by them to being in control of them.

This isn't to say Hange doesn't do bad things. Probably the worst thing she does in canon is torture a military policeman she's captured. The redeeming factor of this is it's treated as a huge crossing of the line by Hange and the comrade who helps her, and Hange displays signs of being wracked with guilt and self-disgust later on. When the victim tells Hange she's no better than he is when she chooses to do this, she takes it to heart, and remembers those words even years later when public opinion begins to turn against her. She hates herself a little bit for doing this, and I think the strong response of self-loathing and disgust indicates that Hange has a heart, and knows what she did was wrong, and why. I think that having experience with both sides of the coin, having an intimate knowledge that being a "good person" is a quality that requires constant upkeep and work, and having developed a variety of coping mechanisms to help herself be a better person, means she'd be a solid pick to try and help someone else manage their negative traits.

Item: A chunk of titan crystal, a substance that appears diamondlike but refracts an large amount of light. Gazing into various facets of the crystal lets Hange check on the status or location of her inmate.
Abilities/Powers: Hange is very highly trained, and knowledgeable in areas as diverse as engineering (she's designed various weapons for fighting titans), chemistry, biology, gunnery, hand-to-hand combat, and wilderness survival. She's a quick study, canonically a genius, and loves learning new things. Also, as a scout, she's trained in the use of 3DMG, also known as tactical gear, also known as vertical maneuvering equipment. 3DMG users are trained to a point of almost inhuman toughness, beginning at the age of 13, and it's accepted that many trainees will die or leave military service during training.

Personality: Hange is a person with lots of strong contrasts, perhaps most succinctly summed up as a fantastic friend and a horrible enemy. A happy, healthy Hange, with a good support network, is a Hange who's highly curious, energetic, affable, supportive, generally kind, funny, willing to go out of her way for people, if lacking in hygiene and sometimes loose with boundaries. As an enemy she's ruthless, even vicious sometimes, with a frightening temper and a strong drive to pursue and bring down her foes. At the later canon point I'm taking her from, all these traits are still there, but buried under stress, frustration and rising desperation as she tries to salvage her people's terrible reputation on the global stage. Given the brutality of her world, it's a bit amazing that Hange still has idealistic dreams of halting the slide towards total war by tactics of peace and negotiation, but she sincerely wants to help form a world where people live peacefully together and learn from each other. We see rising despair in Hange in later canon, and a lot of that stems from both a lack of strong support from those around her, and the apparent inevitability of total war.

Hange is pushing forty years old and has undergone, seen, and wrought many changes during her life. As a young soldier she was defined by anger and hatred. She wished only to kill as many titans as possible before inevitably dying in battle herself. This isn't an unreasonable stance when you think about how terrible an enemy titans are to humanity, as they're merciless beasts that will devour man, woman, child, civilian and soldier alike, without having an actual need to eat humans to survive.

Hange's attitude of hatred changed and she began to reinvent herself after her first expedition across the walls. After killing a titan, she kicked its severed head in glee, then was shocked to see the enormous head go sailing away from her blow. Hange's strong but not that strong and she could see that it was anomalous for the head to fly so far. It was lighter than it should've been, lighter in comparison with its bulk than any other creature she'd encountered. From there, she progressed to wondering about titans in general: why did they sublimate away to nothing when killed? Why did they only hunt and eat live humans, ignoring corpses, almost invariably ignoring animals, especially when they seemed to survive by photosynthesis? What was wrong with their density?

There was something no one else was bothering to pursue about the creatures, something unseen, because no one had looked, no one had studied. No one had bothered and no one was interested, but there was something there to inspect. Once the questions were conceived, Hange couldn't forget them. She decided that the rage and hatred she felt would blind her to the avenues of study that might lead humanity to victory over titans. Then she started work on thinking of titans with an attitude of enthusiasm, curiosity, and compassion. It's not an attitude that's very appealing to most of her peers (imagine a hurricane that's destroyed your house, and Hange is the storm chaser who shows up to wax poetic about the beauty of the storm) but she sticks with it thereafter. She might appear to care about titans more than she does humans, but the reason Hange changed her attitude towards titans was to try and find new ways of neutralizing them. That, like most of the things she does, is done in trying to help her people.

Hange's anger is far from gone though. It jumps off the rails now and again, when she's particularly set off; we can see an example of it in this scene where she gets very angry at Pastor Nick, who's kept secrets that could have saved her comrades' lives. In general Hange gets irate very quickly with people in positions of responsibility who abuse that responsibility, and she's aware of how frightening these bursts of fury can be. The peak expression of this anger is when she is so livid with a military policeman (one who's not only tortured and executed teachers and scientists, but killed someone under Hange's protection) that she's willing to torture him, though we see clear strain on her face, sweat pours off her body as she tortures him, and her reaction afterward indicates fury and disgust at herself for what she's done. Hange thinks back again to this military policeman in a later scene when she's in a position of authority and forced to withhold military information from an angry crowd; the act made a deep impression on her, and I think she'd go to some extreme lengths not to do something like it again. Hange is aware of how bad this trait can be, though she values righteous outrage and wouldn't discount the importance of anger, and I think her keen regret for the torture she committed still makes her warden material.

In the late canon point I'm drawing her from, Hange is at the most drastic low point she's experienced in probably twenty years. Her aide and commanding officers are dead, a key subordinate has betrayed her by launching an unsupported terrorist attack against a country Hange wanted to negotiate with, her situation is getting worse and worse, but Hange seems to dig down and find strength every time. She pulls herself off the brink of collapse by reminding herself about how much she still thirsts to learn and she expresses a desire to rehabilitate her people and stage them into joining the global community as equals, rather than inferiors or dictators. The cheerful attitude has worn very thin, and she hasn't been surrounded by people she can trust in a long time, but she's not shirking her responsibility. A deal with the Admiral will offer her a fresh, promising new avenue to live up to the responsibilities she owes her people. She'll try and put a good face on things and work on her own issues on the down low.

Barge Reactions: Arriving on the barge will honestly be a relief of pressure for Hange. Yes, of course, it's a dangerous place full of interdimensional criminals, but also her canon is a hell world and as described in the history section, at the point she's in in canon her situation is extremely bleak. Being asked to help someone redeem themselves will be a daunting challenge, but also a refreshing change from trying to defend her people from an entire world that hates them. Instead of having to wage war, she'll be asked to use her compassion, empathy for others, and interpersonal know-how to help another person. The opportunity to learn about new worlds, the people that live there, the technology they use, and the way they live their lives will be thrilling.

I plan to have Hange spend her initial time post-arrival staging her own recovery. The recent years of war in her canon have drained her reserves. The weight of command has deprived her of time in the lab studying, researching, and drinking in the joy of learning. The people who used to be her closest supports and partners are now dead. Hange knows herself well. She'll know that she needs to go back to what saved her from her hateful nature in the first place - genuine curiosity and amazement at the mysteries of the universe.

She'll also quickly start talking to unpaired inmates, trying to suss out someone who'd be a good match for her. If she finds a match, she'll pair with them and start that job. If she doesn't, she'll get to know the inmate body and try to help her fellow wardens.

Deal: Hange will ask to put off naming her terms for a while, since she wants to think carefully about how best to use the Admiral's offer.

History: Hange's wikia entry. Since there's a lot of information to parse here, I've also included a condensed history in bullet point form, with what I think are the most important points.

• ~1800 years precanon: the Eldian people differentiate from normal humans. They can change into giant, monstrous humanoid forms known as titans. They quickly rise to rule over other humans in what's known as the Eldian empire. It's uncertain what life was like during this time, but it likely wasn't brutally repressive (because non-Eldians would be eradicated if Eldians had waged genocidal wars using titan power) and likely wasn't great (because Eldians were still as deeply flawed as regular humans and their rulers were certainly far from perfect).


• ~100 years precanon: the Eldian empire collapses. The last Eldian king, a powerful titan shifter who can change between titan and human form, moves his people onto the island of Paradis, builds the walls, and settles his people within the walls. Then he erases their memory through telepathic powers granted by his titan (certain shifters get powers of various kinds). His Eldians forget the bloody history and the repression they inflicted on the world, and live as simple humans in the walls.


• Not all of the Eldian population moves to Paradis with this last king. They are forced into ghettos and become secondclass citizens, and at times weapons of war, of the Marley nation (a nation that at one point was repressed under Eldia)


• ~30 years precanon: Hange is born


• ~7 years precanon: Marley launches an attack on the walls and breaches the outer walls. Eldians lose a massive amount of territory, much of it food-producing land, leading to massive food shortages later. The scouts are on the other side of Eldian-controlled territory and therefore aren't available to fight against Marley's initial strike; they join the fight and aid evacuation efforts later on. The attack makes it clear that the simple, brainless titans scouts are most familiar with aren't all that's out there.

This brings us current with the proper beginning of AOT canon.

• Eren Jaeger is discovered as the first titan shifter within the walls. He's a human that can shift at will between titan and human forms. Hange, a titan researcher, takes an immediate and intense interest in him. Eren joins the scouts.


• Hange begins studying Eren and his shifting abilities but doesn't get too deep in the weeds before the scouts launch an expedition, Eren accompanying. They are attacked by an aberrant-type titan (aberrant titans display unusual properties such as greater endurance than normal or heightened intelligence). This aberrant type displays human-level intelligence and hand-to-hand combat skill, leading the scouts to conclude she's a shifter like Eren.


• Hange aids in efforts to capture the aberrant type, but the titan escapes. The scouts return to the walls. Hange and Erwin, the 13th commander, deduce that the attacking shifter probably lives within the walls, and set up a trap to capture her.


• Indeed, the strange shifter attacks in the walls. The scouts engage her and there's massive property damage and civilian casualties, but she's captured at last, though she encases her human body in crystal (effectively rendering herself comatose) as a last-ditch defense. Pieces of the wall have been chipped away in the fighting and Hange sees a face peering out and realizes the walls are full of titans. This is especially bad because once exposed, the titans might wake up and attack the town.


• Pastor Nick arrives on the scene and begs Hange to repair the holes. She immediately enacts a temporary repair and, realizing he's keeping secrets, nearly drops him off the wall while demanding he share what he knows.


• Nick won't spill. Hange spares his life, slightly impressed by his dedication in spite of herself, but determined to convince him to share what he knows.


• News comes in that titans have breached the second wall that guards humanity. Hange zooms away with her soldiers to assist with that situation. Nick is brought along, and he finally gives Hange some information: an illegitimate heiress to the king has joined the scouts under a false name.


• Hange arrives to support the recruits in danger of being devoured by the titans who've breached the wall. She finds Historia, the heiress, and gets a solid hint that titans come from humans, something she'd suspected for a long time. The wall has not been breached after all - the titans were made from humans living within the wall, their transformation forced by a new enemy.


• Hange withdraws with her soldiers to the top of the wall to rest and regroup. There, the Colossal and Armored titans - the titans that initially breached the wall almost ten years ago in a devastating terrorist attack - are revealed to be two soldiers who are part of her group. Hange directs her soldiers in an engagement with the Colossal and Armored titans. She's seriously injured during this fight.


• Eren is captured and their enemies retreat into titan-controlled territory with him.


• Scouts arrive to reinforce Hange. She can't go with them, but directs her allies to where she thinks the Colossal and Armored titans have gone to ground. Scouts pursue them. Eren is recovered.


• About two weeks pass. Hange shares everything she's learned with Erwin. Pastor Nick is murdered. Hange goes to inspect the scene, eventually recognizing the military policeman, Sannes, guarding the crime scene as a royal enforcer who probably committed the murder himself. The scouts can't move against the crown yet so she backburners the information.


• The scouts, along with the other military branches, begin planning a rebellion; living under the current king is becoming unsustainable due to his repressive attitudes. Hange kills time, experiments on Eren, and eventually helps capture Sannes. She tortures him with the assistance of her fellow scout Levi. Eventually he gives them more information on the royal family, but Levi and Hange's decisions return to torment both of them along down the line.


• Hangee goes to share everything she's learned with Erwin. When she's sharing the information with him, Erwin receives word that he's been accused of murdering a wealthy merchant. He declares Hange the interim commander of the scouts before his arrest, and orders her to flee.


• Hange finds the merchant's fleeing military police. She rescues him, realizes that Erwin was falsely accused of the crime to deprive the scouts of leadership, and searches up a couple of journalists in the hopes that if they report truthfully on events the scouts can clear their organization of any shadow of wrongdoing.


• Hange manages to win a town over to supporting the scouts. Through further machinations the scouts manage to clear their name. Erwin is no longer in danger of being executed, but Historia and Eren have been captured.


• Hange is able to figure out where Eren and Historia have likely been taken. Along with other officers, she leads the scouts to that location. While attempting to retrieve the two young scouts, Hange is injured and Historia's father (the true king - he put a decoy on the throne and ruled from the shadows, and is the man who's truly enforcing repressive policies) consumes titan serum and becomes a titan. This is a big revelation and confirms Hange's longrunning suspicion that titans come from humans.


• Historia's father is a mindless beast as a titan rather than a full fledged titan shifter.
  Historia kills him.


• Historia is crowned king.


• Two months pass. Hange invents a weapon that can be used to kill titans when they're lured to a certain spot. This is great because now the scouts can eliminate titans without risking their lives.


• The scouts prepare for an expedition to the town the Colossal and Armored titans attacked so many years ago. If they can use Eren's abilities to repair the wall there, then they can clear that area of titans and people can resettle there. It'll mean an end to food shortages and crowded conditions, so it's very desirable to do this.


• Their enemies know they're coming. The Colossal and Armored titans wait for the scouts at the site of the breach, along with a new enemy known as the Beast titan. The Beast titan is also the one who transformed the humans living in the walls into titans. He's exceptionally dangerous.


• Erwin dies in this battle. Hange's aide dies saving her life. Hange loses her eye in the fighting, but manages to cross the burning town to rejoin her soldiers and help finish the fight.


• Eren's father came from outside the walls, and left a huge stash of information for the scouts at the site of the battle, which is also the now-abandoned town where the scouts used to be based. It's here where Eren, Hange and the others learn about their people's awful history, and the fact that the entire world now considers them enemies.


• They've taken heavy losses, and the scouts now have about ten people left in their forces, but the wall is repaired. Hange is the new commander of the scouts - a bitter position for her, not one she chose. They return to human territory victorious, but it's a complete Pyrrhic victory.


• A year later, Hange and her people have expanded to hold the coast of their island. They must hold the coast to defend it from invading forces (the outside world has made huge technological leaps while the Eldians were trapped on their island; they have flying machines, trains, steam ships, and the like, while the Eldians lag behind).


• Marley is sending soldiers to attack the island, but it turns out that many of these soldiers have been impressed from the armies of other countries. Not only is Marley moving against Eldia; Marley is at war with many nations of the world. This is good for Eldia, since it lets them build their power base.


• Hange takes in some of the attacking "Marleyan" soldiers as allies, specifically those soldiers who resent being impressed by Marley and wish to betray their masters. They're able to help her bring Paradis technologically up to speed. She works on this for about three years.


• Eren seems to have been destabilizing since he learned the truth of Eldian history. It's not entirely clear, but it seems like he might be connecting to a collective mind that holds about 1700 years worth of memories, passed to him from his titan. Eren steals away from the island. Not all of the Eldians moved inside the walls on Paradis; some remain on the Marley continent, where they live as second-class citizens. Eren infiltrates the Marley there and sets up a terrorist attack that demoralizes Marley severely and powers up his titan even more, but also kills a massive number of people, including civilian casualties.


• Eren has also teamed up with the Beast Titan, Zeke, to launch his attack on Marley. Zeke worked for Marley originally but seems to be in the process of betraying them. Zeke must be mentioned here because he returns to Paradis Island with Eren and the others, and his plots cause a lot of trouble for Hange and the scouts loyal to her.


• Hange leads the scouts on a mission to retrieve him from the Marley continent but she's furious with him. Eren's actions have made them a subject of mistrust and a target to the entire world, not just Marley. It'll be much harder, if not impossible, to negotiate for peace now.


• Hange has Eren jailed. It clearly pains her to do this; she was once attached to him as a subordinate and regarded him as humanity's hope, but in her eyes it's dangerous to allow him to go around freely.


• Eren is still regarded as a hero by a large part of the populace. A few scouts take it upon themselves to leak news of his imprisonment; the public gathers around Hange's offices, demanding answers and justification for why their hero is imprisoned. Hange has the four scouts who leaked news of Eren's imprisonment jailed as well.


• Eren breaks out of prison.


• Hange realizes that among the Marleyan soldiers who helped her build Paradis' infrastructure, there are soldiers making further plots of their own for unclear reasons. They're teaming up with Zeke for reasons that aren't totally clear - the current plot seems to be that Zeke and Eren want to involuntarily sterilize all Eldians so that no more people who can change into titans will be born. These soldiers seem to also want to strike back against Marley for the abuses Marley directed towards them as well. To this end, Zeke has laced lots of wine with his spinal fluid, which is a substance that primes an Eldian to transform into a titan. These Eldians will transform involuntarily into titans at his signal.


• Hange learns about the tainted wine and starts trying to take countermeasures against that.
  She doesn't have any time to make inroads, though, since the scouts who leaked the information about Eren's imprisonment immediately mount a coup. Hange, along with other military leaders, is taken captive.


• The traitorous scouts begin a search for Zeke. Hange pleads with them to lay down arms, negotiate, and come to some kind of peaceful resolution; they have no time to be fighting with each other, it's a waste of time and resources, and Zeke and Eren's plan is terrible. She still would like to attempt some kind of peaceful resolution. She's ignored.


• They're out in the boonies when Hange hears a distant explosion, the sound of a weapon she recognizes. She's allowed to dismount her horse, and finds her longtime comrade Levi severely injured.


• The traitorous scouts want to shoot him. Hange claims he's dead. When one of the traitors demands to examine Levi himself (with the clear implication that if Levi lives, he'll be shot like a dog), Hange leaps into a conveniently located river (it's RIGHT THERE) with Levi in her arms.
  The admiral approaches her as they're being swept along by the current.

I hope that isn't too long (and please let me know if there's any canon specific jargon that should be explained! I wanted to make this more accessible and streamlined than the wiki).

Sample Journal Entry: Hello, helloooo, good afternoooon. I guess it's high time I should introduce myself.

[A woman grins into the camera. She has an eyepatch and brown hair flops all over her face. Smiling, she pivots her device so she's being recorded upside-down, and keeps the video that way.]

My name's Zoe Hange! Call me Hange, please.

Unpaired inmates, come talk to me! Obviously I'm looking for a partnership. Let's chat now and see how our personalities mesh.

All the rest of you, I guess... [Hange sets her device down (still recording upside-down), and leans back in her chair, twiddling her thumbs and staring at the ceiling. Then she leans forward. Her nose crinkles when she smiles.]

What's the most beautiful place you've ever been to? It's not necessary that it be grand. Just, the most beautiful place of all places you've ever seen!

Sample RP: The sleep cycle was a wicked construction and had to be punished. That was why Hange was up at four o'clock in the morning, encyclopedia stashed under one arm, making her way into the enclosure.

It worked great to take advantage of the Barge's more unique systems at unusual times. No one could accuse her of hogging anything. So what if she was becoming nocturnal? It was prime time to hit the beach. Hawaii, apparently, had some good sites. In trust to the writers and the Admiral, Hange just went with it. Her reward was a slice of paradise: the bluff rose up behind her, a cool breeze cut the humidity, the tide pulled way back to expose a flat plain of jagged rocks and pools of water. Tide pools! Hopefully full of strange organisms to inspect.

"You should be here, Erwin," Hange said to the projection of sea, the false breeze. You should see this, Moblit. She wondered if it was a capture of some place that actually existed, or if somehow it was a location spun out of her mind, or some other person's mind, someone who more properly knew what a beach and tide pools would look like.

It didn't matter that much. It wasn't something she could influence. The sky was as blue as she'd ever seen, the air tasted as fresh as anyone could wish. Soon enough she'd be shouldering a serious responsibility. Hange sat down to remove her boots, and put it out of her mind. The waves, the possibility of finding something she'd never seen before, it made her feel more energetic. She felt curious about the future. It was more than enough to start with.

Special Notes: I'd like Hange to arrive with her 3DMG in tow, as well as a flare gun (the 3DMG will be the more old-fashioned model, the one Hange is most familiar with. Scouts use flares to signal each other and indicate what obstacles lie ahead and what direction they'll be traveling in.