Cyrus Donovan

* Canon design
* Early design

> You know what, I'm going to commit a hate crime.
>
> - Cyrus to his coworker Eric, Chapter 27 of Anchor

**Cyrus Donovan** is one of the main protagonists and POV characters of *Anchor**.* He is the boyfriend of James Kaiser.

## Profile

### Overview

Cyrus Donovan is a superhuman living in Santa Cruz, California, and maintains a comfortable lifestyle due to his false ranking. He makes good money as a bartender and lives in a nice condo, so his biggest struggle in life is that he continuously gets dumped because he's superhuman. In fact, this very thing happens in chapter one, when his boyfriend of one year, James Kaiser, temporarily breaks up with him because he lied about being superhuman. This is the first of many Ls Cyrus takes within the story, the second L being the fact he was blackmailed into helping Styx figure out Faultline's identity, which eventually led to Cyrus being recruited into the resistance against his will.

### Abilities

Cyrus is a fairly powerful gravity manipulator, and his power has multiple different applications. Firstly, he can reverse gravity, enhance the earth's gravity, and make things weightless. This ability is his go-to during a fight. At close range, he can slam people into ceilings or keep them stuck to the floor, unable to move under their own weight, but the farther he extends his powers, the weaker the effect becomes. When using his powers, everything within range will be affected--he can't pick and choose what will be affected and what won't. The exception is if he's actually touching a person or item. In this case, he can use his abilities solely on that person or item without affecting his surroundings, but the effect ends when he loses contact.

Cyrus can also use his ability on himself, which is useful for transportation. He can float, walk on walls and ceilings, and make himself lighter so he can run faster and jump farther than the average person.

He can also use himself as a center of gravity to pull things towards him. The strength of this ability is range-dependent and not nearly as powerful as his more general gravity manipulation.

As a general rule, Cyrus's powers aren't strong enough to kill somebody on their own, but they can injure people severely in some cases.

## Story

### Background

Cyrus grew up in a small town in Ontario, where he was the only superhuman. He aspired to be a superhero like the ones he saw on TV, but due to living in the middle of nowhere and also being a literal child, he soon realized such a thing would be impossible. On top of that, being the most powerful person in his town made him a prideful little chump, and people eventually grew tired of his shenanigans and began to hate him, which made him realize that maybe being a superhuman isn't so cool after all! After graduating high school, he moved to Toronto to go to university and do drugs and develop his long-lasting character trait of never telling anybody that he's superhuman. This went well for him until the war ended and Canada was declared a superhuman-free zone, so he was swiftly deported to California (a fate worse than death).

### Events of *Anchor*

Cyrus was doing a bartending and then went on a date with James but got doxxed as superhuman and they broke up. They got back together after James was traumatized enough to abandon his doubts about superhumans and realized that he still loves Cyrus. Cyrus finally got a W. I'm so proud.

He also does many things that are not romance-related and have nothing to do with James, but those are hardly important.

### Family and Relationships

Despite Cyrus being the protagonist, his parents are somehow both still alive, although they have not been named because our kind and beautiful goddess Hailey HATES to think of names. He has no siblings, but he does have some aunts and uncles and cousins and probably grandparents too. They aren't important.

Over the past several years, Cyrus has been in many relationships with many different people, but these relationships don't usually last longer than a few months, since people tend to find out pretty quickly that he's superhuman. However, he really wants to have a long-lasting, serious relationship, which is why he implemented his ultimate Lying Technique on James, and this gained him a few extra months of wholesome relationship time before James inevitably found out, got mad, and dumped Cyrus. However, James and Cyrus get back together after pining for each other for like two-thirds of the book.

## Trivia

* Cyrus has canonically done both your mother and your father.
* Due to his temporary shift into a stubborn, defeated, and disagreeable personality, dismayed fans of Cyrus took to calling him "Pissbaby." No character actually states this in the story.
* You love Cyrus.
* Initial plans of *Anchor* had Cyrus getting together with Reagan Byrne. This would get changed when Hailey decided she liked James too much to end their relationship.
* One specific fan has expanded on the "Pissbaby" nickname and has started to refer to Cyrus as "Pisstwink," despite the fact he's no longer pissy or a twink or even gay. The Cyrus slander is truly a sad sight to behold :(