thingsfall | The Pines: Application

PLAYER

NAME: Brona
CONTACT: PMs or

waswritinwater
OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: Junyoung Cho and Rachel Conway

CHARACTER

NAME: Bruce Wayne
CANON: DC Extended Universe
CANON-POINT: Between Batman v Superman and The Justice League films; in the early days of assembling the Justice League.

DOSSIER

HISTORY: Bruce Wayne at the DCEU Wiki.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS?:
Peak Mental Conditioning: Bruce is an intelligent man, and very well educated in multiple sciences and social sciences. He's The World's Greatest Detective: shrewd, observant, thinks quickly on his feet, able to pick up on patterns and connections. He's also a good tactician, able to do things like pick up on an opponent's fighting style, or figure out how to make a particular area more defensible or better suited to trap someone else.

Emotional Intelligence: He is admittedly not always great at the self-regulation part of being emotionally intelligent. But he's motivated, he can be empathetic one-on-one, he has strong social skills, he's confident. He's a leader and coalition-builder, having been a successful businessman, and now in starting to assemble the Justice League. He has a decent sense of humor and he's good with people. He's also very protective of them.

Selflessness: He is selfless, both publicly and privately. He shares his financial wealth with many good causes, supporting people in need. His wealth also allows him to train and arm himself as Batman. Aside from his money Bruce also risks his life on a nightly basis, to protect others, and is even willing to lay down his life.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES?:
Dual Nature: He became skilled at presenting a public face to the world that helped shield him from discovery as the vigilante who worked in the city's shadows. No one would suspect the affable if somewhat out of touch playboy businessman spent his nights patrolling the city streets fighting criminals. This dichotomy often reflected Bruce's own inner turmoil: full of rage and grief about his losses while also feeling guilty for not having prevented them; knowing that he was powerless in the past and working to try to make it so that he never was again.

Desire for Family: Bruce is also a man heavily influenced by the idea of family. It's an ideal he lost with his parents' death, and one he has tried to build around himself along the way. First he had it with the Robins who were surrogate sons to him even as they worked at his side, but when Jason Todd was killed by the Joker a decade ago, it devastated him. Revisiting the loss of family and the feelings of guilt and powerlessness scraped a harder, darker edge onto his crusade against crime, and he became more brutal, more willing to hurt and even kill criminals to save his city. His humanity became somewhat eroded with that loss.

At the start of Batman v Superman, we see the latest iteration of Bruce's family: his people at the Wayne Financial Building in Metropolis, particularly Jack O'Dwyer, a company executive and longtime friend, and Wallace Keefe, who he would support financially after rescuing him from the building's rubble. Once again, Bruce was forced to stand by and watch as senseless violence and destruction went on around him, as he lost family, and his anger at his powerlessness became focused on Superman. He mounted a one-man crusade to stop Superman, incorrectly believing him to be a threat, completely willing to sacrifice himself in the process if it saved the human race (also an extension of his family, metaphorically, compared to Superman). Unfortunately in letting these emotions get the better of him on this scale, he was left open to Lex Luthor's manipulations, and didn't see the truth until he had nearly killed Superman.

It took Superman, a man not of this world, to restore Bruce's humanity. Once again he had suffered a loss, one he felt responsible for and guilty about. He felt that he had failed Superman in life, and was determined not to fail him in death. He is once again focusing those emotions that shape him into something that serves the greater good, in this case, the formation of the Justice League. He is once again building a family around himself, but this time, he does so with a much clearer head and more optimism.

Self-Righteousness: Remember how I said he was bad at the self-regulation part of emotional intelligence? Yeeaaah. He can get rigid in his thinking when he is angry or hurting. He can get up his own butt about how right he is based on his extensive experience, twenty years of punching criminals, and so on. When he really slips and his anger overtakes him it takes a lot to get him back on course, though he can eventually get there.

He's Got Buttons That Can Be Easily Pushed: Is a child in danger? A woman, especially a mother? Are those with more power exploiting and hurting those with less? Prepare for Batzilla to bust through the nearest wall to headpunch them.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?: ALL THE DEATHS because they represented pain, trauma, and loss, and hurtled him toward the next stage of working to save and protect people, whether he was doing it well or doing it with a lot of rage: his parents' deaths, Jason's death, Superman's death.

Being Batman has also hugely shaped the course of and events in his life. It's been rewarding though it's cost him a lot; it's nearly killed him a thousand times over even as he works to make a legacy out of it with the Justice League.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?: The desire to help, protect, rescue, and care for people. You see it in everything he does from his charitable work to his trying to build a family to his adventures as Batman.

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?: That he's an airheaded jackass, albeit a warm, kind, generous, well-off one. He means well, always, but isn't always the most capable dude outside the boardroom. But you forgive him his eccentricities, because you know what happened to his parents.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?: He is way more shrewd and capable than he lets on. He's nearly always the smartest person in the room and could probably take everyone there in a fight. He's also far more noble and self-sacrificing than he can let on. He's a superhero but few people know it.

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?: Generally he wants to fly right in and punch it repeatedly. Often that's what he winds up doing, but first, unless he's really worked up or triggered, he will try to come up with some kind of game plan for dealing with the crisis before he punches it.

When it comes to other people he will do anything and everything to keep them safe in a crisis, or to help them weather adversity, while he's busy punching it over and over.

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?:
1. That he lost his parents when he was a child.
2. That he lost his teenage son a few years ago.
3. That he traveled the world as a younger man to seek anything and everything that would help him become the man he wanted to be.
4. That he lost his friend recently, and very likely failed him.
5. That Diana is very important and has his back, though he doesn't always understand why.

These things all shaped who he has become, while having a major impact on the course of his life.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?: He's built like a brick shithouse: 6'3", his six pack has a six pack, he's like a seriously imposing dude which you'd think people would be like "hmm, why so ripped, businessman" about but no.

Also he's your standard dad: grumpy on the outside, mushy on the inside, occasionally amused by your antics.

SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES:
Peak Physical Conditioning: Bruce is incredibly physically fit, having trained himself over decades for superior strength and endurance. He is a master of many martial arts and fighting styles. His reflexes, balance, coordination, agility, and pain endurance have been trained to be much better than the average person's.

Mechanical/engineering aptitude: Most of Batman's equipment was created by Bruce himself, as he couldn't exactly order what he needed off Amazon. He can draft things, he can recognize when something is broken and undertake repairs, he can see to upgrades. This is less likely to be of direct impact in the game's setting, with the lower level of technology, but he might be able to translate those skills into being able to fix things around the settlement, or to devise or adapt tools, or to figure out how to shore up a building, for instance.

Basic knowledge of human anatomy and first aid: Granted, he taught himself all about the human body so that he could determine the best places to punch it for maximum damage. But that knowledge, coupled with the number of times he's had to stitch himself up or attend to his own injuries, gives him a basic working knowledge of how to recognize and treat injuries. He's not going to be able to to do extensive surgery or long-term care on anyone, but if somebody twists an ankle or breaks an arm, he can help.

Education: Bruce is excellently and extensively educated; he has the Ivy League education the public knows about, he speaks several languages, and he is very well-read, literate, and knowledgeable on a number of topics. When working toward becoming Batman he also privately sought out education and training in various disciplines that would help him, such as psychology, criminology, and forensics.

Physical weaknesses: he'a s superhero but he's not superpowered, so a well-placed knife or gunshot could take him out, he probably shouldn't do half the shit he does but try and stop him, he can be killed like your standard baseline human.

Also: while he's way ahead of the curve for your average 45 year old man, he's still 45. He's not as spry as he was when he first started busting heads twenty years ago.

INVENTORY:
-bespoke three-piece gray suit with matching shirt, tie, cufflinks, and belt
-expensive leather shoes
-expensive underwear and socks
-rolex watch
-designer gray wool overcoat
-with two batarangs in the pocket, bruce, what is your life
-expensive leather zippered folder with a notepad and papers from work
-and tucked inside, photos of bruce with jason, with alfred, and with his parents

SAMPLES

PROSE-HEAVY: http://aspida.dreamwidth.org/284.html?thread=284#cmt284; http://sixthiterationlogs.dreamwidth.org/24160.html; http://prolix.dreamwidth.org/7912.html?thread=583400#cmt583400
DIALOGUE-HEAVY: http://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/3833066.html?thread=1777008106#cmt1777008106; http://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/3695593.html?thread=1722952681#cmt1722952681