The Player
Name/nickname: Kelly
Age: 29
Pronouns: female
Contact: DM watcher_giles or stringertheory, email xqqmoi@gmail.com
Experience: Much in BA, two current characters, having been playing for about 16ish months.
Currently played characters: peeta_mellark and former edgar_sawtelle

The Character
DW account: watcher_giles
Name: Rupert Edmund Giles
Alias: Generally goes by Giles, will answer to Rupert
Age/Birthdate: unknown, born in approximately 1955, 46-47 years old
Species: human
Canon: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
Canon point: Between S6 and S7, after returning to England with Willow.
Played By: Anthony Stewart Head

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Abilities:
As a former member of the Watchers' Council, Giles has expansive knowledge of languages, texts from arcane to almost modern, various martial arts, demonology, and the occult. He has some skill with hand-to-hand and weapons combat, and a moderate natural aptitude for witchcraft and sorcery. He has extensive experience in supernatural research and battle.
The Rift, feeling extra cheeky, gives Giles something that could have been incredibly helpful in the Buffyverse, but is mostly inconvenient in Rift York: super strength.

Appearance:
Giles is approximately 6'1” tall, with green eyes and brown hair flecked with gray. He is of moderate build and fit for his frame. He often wears suits – tie, waistcoat, and all – and opts for casual wear of trousers or jeans paired with a sweater or long-sleeved shirt, often times topped by a leather jacket. He wears glasses, which he has a tendency to take off and polish with a handy kerchief when expostulating, or in order to pinch the bridge of his nose when exasperated. He carries himself with a measured, loping grace.

Personality:
Giles is terribly English in that he is proper, polite, hard to ruffle, and very fond of tea. While he is usually pleasant and accommodating, he does possess a wide sarcastic streak that he uses to pinpoint effect. And though he is generally calm and reserved, he can, when necessary, shift to swift and even violent action without hesitation. He is slow to anger, but once roused is difficult to assuage. And while he has a kind heart, he can be cold when personally wronged or when those close to him are hurt. Though he can initially come off as aloof, once he is attached to someone, he cares deeply about them and is a loyal and dedicated friend. He has a strong protective instinct, sometimes beyond the point of self preservation.

He is not afraid to die, or to sacrifice himself for the greater good. The driving force of his life has been the protection of the innocent and the defeat of evil in all its forms. That, combined with his thirst for knowledge, has made him a formidable opponent of dark supernatural forces. He is very much a scientist in that he views the world – both real and supernatural – as something that can be studied, understood, and explained. Though brilliant, he can sometimes be blinded by that brilliance and miss weaknesses in his plans. He can also be blinded by his affection for someone to the point that he misses their weaknesses as well.

Giles is not blind to the grey moral ground on which he walks while fighting evil. Not all demons are bad, not all humans are good, and Giles is fairly good at gauging the good and bad in everyone. In his early years working with Buffy, he became familiar with – if not completely fond of – Angel, an ensouled vampire who provided knowledge and assistance to the gang. Giles also spent time working with another vampire, Spike. Spike started helping fight the forces of evil while he was unable to harm humans (due to an experimental treatment), eventually becoming a fringe member of the Buffy team. Despite this – and their bonding over the soap Passions - Giles never liked or trusted Spike.

To those close to him, Giles is seen as a rock, as a steadying force. He's the one who knows what's going on, or can figure it out, and gets the answers that are needed in the nick of time. He is at turns confidante, comforter, and chastiser.

History:
Giles grew up in England, part of a long line of Watchers, those who train and assist the Slayer, chosen to defeat the forces of Evil. Though his destiny was set before he was born, he had a period of rebellion where he dabbled in dark magic, with dire consequences. The aftermath of that rebellion deeply changed him, both setting him back on the path of his legacy and imbuing him with firsthand knowledge of the danger of dark magic. After this period, Giles embraced his calling and eventually moved to Sunnydale, California, and became Watcher to the Slayer, Buffy Summers.

Giles grew very attached to Buffy, along with her friends Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris, becoming a sort of surrogate father to them all. Along with teaching Buffy, he also fought alongside her, further developing his own combat skills. His feelings for Buffy sometimes interfered with his ability to do his job, such as when he was called upon to betray Buffy's trust to fulfill the Watchers' Council tradition of Cruciamentum. His inability to allow the test to go on caused him to lose his job as a Watcher. He was replaced as Buffy's Watcher, but continued to play that role in her life, to his replacement's irritation. Having been removed from the very organization that shaped his life, Giles felt slightly adrift. However, stepping out of the control of that archaic group allowed him to grow more relaxed and inventive in his approach to the supernatural, leading him to be even better at helping Buffy.

Giles left Sunnydale for England twice. The first time, he left because he felt he was no longer needed in Sunnydale. He quickly returned when Buffy asked him to be her Watcher again, and focused on teaching her everything he could discover about being the Slayer. Buffy eventually even got him reinstated in the Watchers' Council. Later, after Buffy's mother's death – and Buffy's own death and resurrection – he left for England again, this time because he believed that his presence kept Buffy from taking responsibility for her life, and that she needed to learn to stand on her own. In England, he worked with a powerful coven, who sent him back to Sunnydale a few months after he left to stop Willow – filled with dark magic – from destroying the world.

He succeeds, and it is shortly after doing so that he is dragged through the rift...


Writing Sample:
Check out this BA dream thread!