[Phantom]

Helena Bora Lutz

Full Name: Helena Bora Lutz
Pronouns: Any (except it/it's)
Nicknames: Hel/Hell, Helen
Age: 24
Gender: Intersex
Room #: -
Birthplace: Spring Valley, Nevada
Birthday: October 8th
Orientation: Pansexual
Status: Single
Power: Crystal Manipulation
Play-By: Sungjong Lee
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 149lbs


Personality:
To call Helena a free spirit would be an understatement. She loves a good adventure, and happily lives a nomadic lifestyle. He is fun-loving, and maybe he won't always want to live the touring lifestyle- but he's been doing it for seven years now, and hasn't gotten sick of it yet. When it comes to their art, especially when they're actively working on a comic, Helena keeps a disciplined schedule. She is basically always drawing- and if you put a pen in her hand and give her some paper- she'll happily scribble all over it. Helena is flexible in the sense that, well- it doesn't really matter if she's drawing in her RV, or drawing overlooking the grand canyon- or at burning man, or at a concert- anywhere- really.

Above all else, Helena likes to be mysterious. He actually enjoys it when people are confused about his gender. If they're nice about it he'll educate them- if they're not, he's very fond of a "does it matter?" or "but why?" "why do you ask?" "that's such an odd question, why do you ask?" ad infinitum. Need it be said that Helena is experimental? They enjoy trying new things out, and shaking things up. There is a bit of a cute side to Helena too, and she'll try and use her big, bright eyes to wriggle her way out of anything.

Helena is a thief. Not like, a cat burglar or anything. He just- every once in a while- swipes a little something. He doesn't usually steal from people, unless it's "borrowing" a friend's shirt or something. Mostly he'll just nab a ring from Walmart. Or a pen. Or a glass from a hotel. Helena isn't actually that picky. When it comes to confrontation, Helena isn't very good at it. She'd much rather disappear for a while until things cool off. Or if she doesn't really know or care about the person- she'll just ignore them. Helena isn't the type not to start trouble- they're the type that won't admit to starting it.

She's also a liar. Not to her friends- she never lies about anything serious. But you know, sometimes it's fun when you meet someone in a town in Oklahoma that you're never going to see again, to pretend you're a wealthy heiress. Fans of their work are well aware that they like to post "spoilers" online that aren't really spoilers at all. Or will come up with a beta-name for their work that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual comic. Mostly Helena just lies for fun, if it's not fun, he won't do it.

He has his own unique charm to him. And while Helena certainly sounds like a mess- they're at least a fun mess. They have an unnaturally cheerful disposition, and their bad qualities are more subtle than they sound on paper.

History:
(cw: drug abuse)

Before Helena was born, her parents had three different sonograms done for gender. Every single one was different. When she was actually born, the doctor assigned her female at birth. Her parents named her Helena- and for the first twelve years of her life, she lived as a girl. Every few years she'd go with her parents to a hospital in the city, to see a doctor to screen her for development- and for cancer.

Helena and her older sister had a mixed relationship. Sometimes they were best friends, and other times they really worked each others' nerves. Mostly because her sister constantly stole from her- and their parents. If something of hers went missing, all Helena had to do was look under her bed. She'd swear up and down that she had nothing of hers- and she'd pull whatever it was out and just stare at her. She got real quiet after that.

So Helena watched her, and unlike her- learned how to steal with stealth. She also knew better than to steal from their parents. Or from a store that wasn't like... Walmart or whatever. She'd just slip a lollipop in her pocket and nobody would be the wiser. Sometimes, at school, she'd keep a pen or two- she wasn't picky. Mostly, she just did it because she could.

At school, she always came up with the best tall tales. Telling stories was Helena's passion- but she wasn't really into writing.

The only thing that sticks out about Helena's early childhood were the little purple crystals she'd always find. They were usually different shapes and sizes, but they were always purple.

It might sound weird, given that she's an artist for a living- but Helena was not actually born with a pen in her hand. She didn't start really drawing until middle school. But- once she started- she didn't stop. Helena wasn't a good artist, but she was a prolific one. And prolific artists do eventually get better.

Then she was twelve, and instead of getting her period, Helena's voice started getting deeper- and he grew facial hair. He started developing more muscles than all the other girls in his class. So... He was a boy right? By now he knew why he was going to that doctor every few years.

His puberty started out of nowhere, but it didn't really continue. He needed to get hormone injections every few months, so he'd develop "normally". And then he finally got to the seventh grade- when they had their mandatory sex-ed class. And he had a lot of questions. His parents had never really hid anything from him, per se, but now he was definitely old enough to have a talk.

He had a disorder of sexual development. The doctor decided he was female, so they gave him a female name. They did their research and decided not to have him operated on- "if it can pee, let it be," was just starting to become a thing. They asked, but Helena didn't want to change his name.

It was his name, why should he change it?

At school, Helena wasn't treated much differently than before. Sure, the other kids definitely asked him some inappropriate questions- but he answered them. He was just Helena, same as they'd always known him: he just had a shorter haircut now. He used a different bathroom, and locker room.

It never really occurred to him that- had he been the sporty type- there probably would have been an uproar. Helena mostly preferred to hang out in the art room and socialize with the other kids who weren't "popular", but weren't outcasts either.

Helena made a Tumblr and started posting his art there. He mostly drew creatures, or made those little meme comics.

And then, Helena discovered Homestuck.

Well, discovered is a weak word- one of the kids he hung out with was really into it. He'd never seen anything like it before. He'd seen short form internet comics- and he'd seen actual like, published- capeshit comics. But the art style, except in some panels and the animations, wasn't like the super-detailed, polished, perfectly pressed style of actual comics. It had art, it had sound, it had video- fuck it literally had games in the damn comic!

Genius. That's what he thought it was. He and that friend made more than a few cosplays, went to cons, and local can-towns- all of that stuff. It was great! Helena drew dozens of Homestuck memes a day. Then he started searching, and there was a whole ecosystem of web comics online.

In high school, one of Helena's closest friends started a band. He didn't have anything else to do after school, so he went to most of their gigs. They were pretty good.

He and the main vocalist may or may not have also had a "thing"- but that just sweetened the deal. They went through a few name changes, like most bands do- but then they finally settled on a name- Las Vegas Revenge.

As a joke, after they decided on a name, Helena drew them a "logo". It did not match- at all- but it stuck. That weird form of irony actually ended up becoming their brand. When they graduated from playing garages to playing smaller venues, they started making clip-art posters with chicks in bikinis, flames, and aliens- the kind of stuff that a bunch of high school dudes thought looked cool, and funny.

Helena was basically living on the internet outside of school and their gigs, and by chance he found a group for other intersex people. He started reading about more complex forms of identity. Because, while his voice had deepened some, and he could get a respectable five o'clock shadow going on- "boy" didn't really fit. If he was wearing a hat, or someone looked at him from behind when his hair was a little grown out, people often mistook him for a girl. If he grew his hair longer, most people thought he was a girl.

Truthfully, Helena was fine with being perceived as either. But on a personal level, she felt limited by both labels. Intersex, as an identity, felt right. That's what he was! Helena had never really felt the need to correct people about the pronouns they used with them, but on their Tumblr they changed the ones they had listed. She was fine with any of them, as long as it wasn't it. That implied they were a science experiment- and Helena was just born this way.

While he was skating by in school, Helena was spending a lot of time making merch for the band. By their senior year they had started to get pretty big- and they were actually making some sales on their little online store.

Helena graduated with little fanfare.

And then, almost overnight, LVR were signed. Helena didn't really have anything better to do- she was in the early stages of storyboarding a webcomic- so she came up with them. The label bought the rights to the logo, and the band were going on their first tour. Helena came along and worked their merch booth. When he had time off, he drew, like always. Some of the designs became official.

LVR did a few small-time tours. Regional, in small venues. They recorded a couple of albums officially, and things were going well. On the road, they were starting to get a reputation. They had many nights that could only be described as: "how many bad decisions can a group possibly make?" They were day-drinking and Helena and the lead singer were still fucking around, like they always did.

LVR only continued to grow, and it was almost like the more famous the band got- the more the members felt they had to smoke, drink, and inject their money away. On tour they were the "party band". They did not give a fuck, and not in a good way.

For her part, on tour Helena mainly concerned herself with making it her business to find out what was going on at rest stops. She leaned into the whole carpe diem- fuck it all- spirit of things for a while. He was only going to be able to live this way once, right?

The venues got bigger and the crowds got wilder. Whenever Las Vegas Revenge was touring North America, Helena was on the road with them. Mostly, he was there now to help the manager keep these guys from killing themselves.

"You're gonna die if you keep doing that."

She looked their front-man in the eyes and said it as loud as she could. He was basically passed out at that point, needle on the windowsill. Helena had basically spent his entire youth with these guys- he really fucking cared about them. But it all felt like trying to swim upstream. Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll was fun for the first three years. After that, Helena was perfectly content being the cool dude- or chick- that managed their merch booth. (She joked, often, that it all just depended on the lighting.)

Helena had been considering quitting for a while, but their next big schedule was a festival. They'd be on tour with a bunch of other bands, so she decided to stay. If things got to be too much on the LVR bus- she could go somewhere else. Thankfully, a lot of the other bands were cool, and he made friends with the other staff. When things got hectic, he'd hang out with the other merch kids, or photographers- and draw.

What they didn't know when they signed up for tour was that there was a notorious gossip blogger associated with the circuit. She was a hack- to be fair. Most of the words she wrote, that barely passed for crap, were all lies. But there was always a little nugget of truth- usually nestled right in the middle. Helena didn't pay much attention to it- she just tried to enjoy the rush that she got from traveling all over the country (and Canada, and sometimes a bit of Mexico). She mostly wrote about the band members anyway.

My dear Helena;
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
S***e and I are women,
How about you?

At first glance it would have seemed like he was the target of that little first-grade rhyme. In reality, Miss Sugar had outed the photographer of another band- a man that Helena was good friends with. It was devastating. Helena, along with most of the other staff on tour, and many of the other bands- rallied around him.

LVR, meanwhile- were all a little too coked out to care too much, and when they weren't they were trashing hotel rooms. Their manager covered for them, like he always did.

Unfortunately both Helena and that photographer didn't know how to act. They both grew out their beards for a few days, and didn't shave. Then they took a selfie and posted it on Instagram with the caption #women. Pulling the evidence out from under the bed didn't deter Miss Sugar like it deterred her sister- she kept being a pest. Fortunately for Helena, and unfortunately for them, she was apparently an LVR fan- even after the tour ended, she kept posting about them.

Being with the band was cool when it got her backstage- and not so cool when she had to learn how to administer narcan.

When Helena left, he didn't say goodbye. He was honestly just done with it all- and they all had his number anyway- if they sobered up and were cool again, they knew where to find him.

And that was the last time that he had anything to do with Las Vegas Revenge. Helena had listened to enough of their songs running the booth for a lifetime- and she was always a little scared when Google News put their name on her feed- had he OD'd? Were they arrested? Did one of them finally drink enough that their liver gave out?

He did have souvenirs though- the small little treasure hoard of things that he'd swiped over the years. One of them turned out to be his favorite ring (a ring which he had stolen from one of the guys, they were too high to care, she guessed).

As fate would have it, it was easy for Helena to leave. She had her two year appointment come up, and lo and behold- she had nad cancer.

At least that's what she called it. Ball cancer didn't really sit right, since she didn't have ball balls. They caught it early- but that didn't make treatment any less miserable. Helena just didn't have a lot of anxiety over it. They'd do some chemo, and then they were going to operate. If everything went well, he'd be cancer-free within six months.

Helena was sick as fuck from the chemo, he mostly rested. But when he wasn't feeling like he got hit by a truck, he was scanning and uploading what he'd drawn in the last four years. They were back to blogging full-time- they bought their first honest to god drawing tablet- and took out their story board. It was a slow process- she only drew when she wasn't sick. She had plenty of cash from being on the road for the better part of the past few years- she mostly bummed alcohol off of the band, and never really spent her own money.

On top of that, Helena was starting to "find" the crystals again. He had started to get very good at shaping them- and started selling them online- alongside the work he thought was good enough to pass for prints. Her favorites were the fabulous little crystal unicorns that she made.

Six months later, Helena was cancer free. Surgery had gone well- although she had a pretty gnarly scar. He was still LVR-free too, thank fuck. Solid time away from that world had made him realize exactly how much that whole experience had changed him.

Unless she was drawing, she felt like she hadn't smiled at all in the last few years- then she had cancer, and she was smiling all the time.

The world felt so big outside of their little dysfunctional vortex.

Helena's first webcomic was published over the next two years. A year in, she realized how much she missed traveling... There was nothing stopping him from touring on his own, was there? There were art shows, fests, and expos all over the country.

Helena took a big chunk of the money that she'd made and bought an RV- and a generator. All he really needed were prints- his little (and medium, and sometimes large,) crystal creatures- and the now retro game systems that he picked up from his parents place. Whatever didn't require internet. He'd draw and save his work offline, and post when he had wifi.

She never really drew the same after chemo. Her hands shook. She felt ill if she looked at a bright screen for too long. And sometimes, she'd just get foggy out of nowhere- like words just didn't make sense anymore. But Helena had never been a technically good artist- she was a prolific one. If he couldn't use the tablet, he'd use good old pen and paper. If words weren't happening, he'd just draw backgrounds. And the shakiness, once he was used to it, actually probably made his art more unique than it ever was.

Being an independent artist wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though. Sometimes she'd drive for hours, and find out that her table was flooded from inches of rain the night before. Things like hail damage to the RV were unavoidable. He once drove through hours of thunderstorms, and almost shit himself more than once when the lightning struck a little too close, and even watched it start a wildfire in a field.

She did it all by herself. Table setup, uploading on time, inventory management- all of it. But she also got to meet people that loved her comic, loved her art, showed her tattoos they got- and she got to see every little bit of the country.

Helena loved touring. It got lonely sometimes- but she had a couple of partners she visited frequently. And she still had friends from her merch days. When he concluded his first comic- a time-traveling noir that, may or may not have had a little bit of inspiration from his band days, he decided to take a break before launching into his next big project.

Honestly, it was probably never a good idea to sell things that he'd made with his power. Someone was bound to become suspicious eventually. Especially now, they'd gotten so precise compared to the crude little gems she'd made on the playground back in the day.

A school for the Gifted.

Now that was a hell of a plot. No, she wasn't that kind of thief. But Helena was looking for inspiration- and it was staring him right in the face. Sure, his income would take a hit for a year- but this was something he'd never be able to do again, unless it was in this time and place.

And because things weren't currently going well in girl world, they decided to stay in the men's dorms. If some ugly dude couldn't keep his hands to himself- and they had to make a crystal shiv, and perform an impromptu castration? So be it.

Other:
The Powers:
Crystal Manipulation- Helena can create crystals, just by using her hands. His crystals are always purple colored, and he can make incredibly elaborate ones. For the past... Well, forever Helena has only ever made crystals because they looked pretty- or to sell as art. But she's certainly practiced making weapons, or a little shield- you never really know what you're going to experience on the road!

Love her, hate him, wanna date them?