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[testflight]

▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Larry Trainor
CANON: Doom Patrol
CANON POINT: the end of Frances Patrol
AGE: late 90s (97 or 98), although physically he looks to be in his late 30s
BACKGROUND: Since the wikis online are either about the comics version or woefully incomplete, here are the cliffnotes:

• Larry was born in 1927 or 1928 and grew up in North Dakota. From an early age on, he was more interested in boys than girls. At some point he got caught playing doctor with another boy and later overheard his parents arguing about his being queer, his father being in denial and his mother worried it'll take their good standing in society away to have a queer son.
  
• On paper, Larry has the perfect life: he joins the US air force and becomes a hot shot test pilot shortlisted for the mercury space program. He has a beautiful wife and two healthy sons. He's an all American hero of the atomic age.
  
• Larry struggles with internalised homophobia. He has a lover, John Bowers (one of his ground crew), who at times pushes for them to get out of the air force so that they can be together.
  
• Larry's marriage begins to break apart due to too many "late night beers with the boys" aka dates with John.
  
• During a testflight, Larry flies through an energy field and picks up a hitchhiker of unknown energy. He loses consciousness, the plane crashes and burns and Larry survives, if with horrible burns.
  
• Larry is so contaminated with radiation that it nearly kills the doctors and nurses hoping to save him; he is kept in quarantine. His wife visits to tell him that she's leaving him because they both deserve better and that she hopes he'll find the love he deserves. John visits to tell him he's staying, but Larry sends him away.
  
• Larry is 'recruited' (forcibly, against his will) by the Bureau of Normalcy, a government agency seeking to make sure nothing extraordinary exists on the planet. There, he's experimented on, tortured and then made to work for the Bureau. The energy being ('Negative Spirit') he picked up on his test flight is also tortured and made to work for the Bureau.
  
• Niles Caulder rescues Larry from the Bureau of Normalcy.
  
• Larry spends decades at Niles' house with other rescues. He wears bandages that keep the radiation in and others from seeing his burns. He shares his body with the Negative Spirit. If it leaves his body, he falls unconscious, mind going into some vision left by the Spirit. For years, he mostly sees those he cared about burning because of him, the visions pure torture.
  
• He takes up horticulture and essentially Does Not Live At All for decades.
  
• Niles Caulder is kidnapped by his nemesis, Mr Nobody. Larry is, at first, set on not getting involved and letting other people sort things out, but takes steps to take a stand.
  
• Larry and the Negative Spirit begin... communicating, although it's a tough process (post it notes, playing videos, visions of memories that the Negative Spirit gets wrong, a lot of yelling on Larry's side). They begin to reach an agreement.
  
• On Danny the Street (a genderqueer teleporting street that picks up those who don't fit in elsewhere) Larry takes some steps toward accepting himself and actively takes a stance against the Bureau.
  
• Larry and the Negative Spirit agree to a plan to return to the Bureau of Normalcy to get Cyborg who's been kidnapped by the Bureau back.
  
• The Negative Spirit connects Larry's mind during visions with that of an old John Bowers who is near dying; they spend a few beautiful moments together in a cabin, visit a gay bar that makes Larry exceptionally uncomfortable because he's still so concerned with what others think and then Larry visits John for real. They watch the sunset together before John dies.

PERSONALITY:

Larry hates himself.

This has been true for a long time and he is only slowly beginning to accept himself. When he was younger, he wanted - needed - to be picture perfect so that no one would question his sexuality. He kept insisting to his wife that he can change, indicating a hope that he could somehow stop being gay, that he could stop loving John. He wanted to be a hero so that he would be untouchable - but it didn't work out that way and after the crash, the self-loathing only grew stronger. In many ways, that is Larry's defining feature, although he is learning to accept both himself and the Negative Spirit (who will not be coming along). The loathing isn't entirely self-directed: he carries a great deal of anger toward the Negative Spirit as well, whom he blames for ruining his life.

His self-loathing and anger prompt him to take rash action at times, such as when he steps into the machine built by a nazi scientist that has the ability to turn ordinary people into metahumans, in the hopes that it will separate him from the Negative Spirit. A large part of his journey toward accepting himself more and letting go of some of the self-loathing, for Larry, is to take responsibility for his own actions and faults instead of blaming the accident and the Negative Spirit for ruining his life. At first, that makes him hate himself more (he calls himself a hypocrite who ruins everyone's lives at one point), but he also realises that the context in which he grew up and lived his life didn't help and that the context has changed now.

Larry is lonely. He says so himself: it gets lonely, not touching anyone for 60 years. From the moment Niles Caulder rescued him from the Bureau of Normalcy, Larry has essentially shut himself off from the world, believing himself to be a monster in more ways than one: on the one hand, because of his homosexuality and the internalised homophobia, on the other, because of the way he looks - and, of course, because of the Negative Spirit inside him. What's more, Larry blames himself for ruining lives: he goes back and forth between whether the Negative Spirit or he himself ruined his life, but

Larry does have a personality underneath all that self-loathing, although it's not a bold one: he is quiet, but not without a sense of humour. At times, he makes quips to make others feel more comfortable with his appearance, or at least the bandages. Other times, he uses it to (try and) lighten the mood, or to deflect from heartfelt admissions. He also isn't all doom and gloom all the time despite the self-loathing, enjoying his horticulture and a gentle friendship built on mutual understanding withDecades of his life essentially on hold have made him self-aware and increasingly able to communicate that awareness to others as well, such as when Cliff talks them all into "group therapy" and Larry shares how he's been torturing himself, hurting not only himself but also the Negative Spirit inside him, which then hurts him back in an endless vicious circle of self-loathing. He isn't brave, but he's learning to be braver, to stand up for his friends and for himself, for what he believes to be right. He runs from Rita in the beginning when she comes an uncontrollable ball of goo (which he shares with her and apologises for), but some ten episodes later, he willingly walks back into the Bureau of Normalcy and risks capture and torture (again) in order to rescue Cyborg. This is all the more remarkable because in the beginning, he is very set on not getting involved. He tried being a hero once (referring to his time as a test pilot) and that turned out horrible, so he is not overly inclined to do it again. And yet, he soon realises that there are important things. What's more: he's sick of hating himself and the spiral of self-loathing.

Larry has a certain penchant for the dramatic. He complains about the bandages being "the death of all nuance", daydreams extensively about singing karaoke (click the link, you won't regret it), wears the same outfit every day with elements reminiscent of his air force time (including fingerless gloves ABOVE the bandages and a giant coat that is great for dramatic effects), has excellent comedic timing (proof), and emotes in a very physical manner, perhaps because of sixty years of being covered by bandages.

As a note: the way he carries himself in the Doom Patrol episode of Titans is very different from the way he carries himself in the actual show. The same holds true for his sense of style and his apparent character (in the Titans episode, he seems quite willing to fight Kory, while in Titans he's more likely to run away or ask for the Negative Spirit to come out than anything else, although - again - he does learn to stand up more and more as the show progresses). As such, I'll mostly ignore the Titans episode, since the continuity between those two, if there is any, is not clear.

In summary: Larry's major trait is self-loathing, although he is on a journey toward self-acceptance. His flaws are passivity, caring too much what other people think of him and being unforgiving toward himself. He is, at times, prone to rash action and to anger, but mostly quiet, although with a penchant for the dramatic. He emotes mostly through his body on account of his face being hidden by bandages, generally sits with his hands in his lap like a schoolboy and often leans dramatically against doorways, walls, etc.

POWERS/ABILITIES:
Without the Negative Spirit, Larry doesn't have any superhuman abilities. He's an excellent pilot, most likely knows how to handle some firearms, he's a good cook and seems to excel at horticulture.

INVENTORY:
1.
An orchid in a pot.
2.
Spare bandages.
3.
Post-its.



MOONBLESSING: Iris