betenoire-rp application;
1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Kris
Current characters in Bete Noire: N/A
2. Character Information
Name: Robert Bruce Banner
Livejournal Username: hulkedout
Fandom: Marvel Movieverse (The Incredible Hulk)
Image: Here!
Reserve: Here!
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Bruce is 33, 5’ 9”, and 130 pounds soaking wet. Half a decade of running and hiding as left him lean but pretty fit, if a bit scruffy and scrawny. He tends toward nondescript, baggy clothing (most of which he’s stolen out of Salvation Army bins), which means a lot of hoodies and baseball caps. He has brown hair, blue eyes, and his glasses tend to make their appearance whenever his farsightedness gives him trouble.
History: Here! He’s being taken from just after his encounter with General Ross’s forces in Brazil, so he’s running panicked. I’ve also used 616 comics canon to fill his background that the movie didn’t cover.
Personality:
Bruce Banner is a bomb waiting to go off, and he knows it. To most, he’s the quiet day laborer, mild, amiable, and surprisingly good at fixing things. If that’s where people’s impression of him ends, well, so much the better for Bruce -- he’s worked hard to remain as unobtrusive as possible.
The scientific equivalent of the boy next door, Bruce is both incredibly intelligent and a genuinely good man. He is reserved but compassionate, and truly believed his research was going to benefit the world, displaying an idealistic streak that ran counter to the Army’s ambitions. When he learned of what Ross was really trying to accomplish, he fled, choosing to give up everything and become a fugitive for over five years rather than let them turn him into a weapon.
As a result, he’s more than a little high-strung. Alert to the point of paranoia, Bruce has learned to live his life out of his backpack, ready to drop everything and bolt at a moment’s notice. Since being a fugitive doesn’t exactly pay well, he’s learned to do without pretty much everything -- he’s lived in the slums, begged in gutters, and roughed it from jungles to deserts and everything in between. His survival skills are second to none, and he’s become cautious and careful in everything he does.
This constant wariness means that Bruce is slow to trust, and generally avoids going out of his way to form any kind of relationship with anyone, for fear of putting them in harm’s way. Despite his withdrawn demeanor and general social awkwardness, however, Bruce likes being around people, and this self-imposed isolation often leaves him painfully lonely.
Riddled with guilt over the people he’s hurt and killed, his mind is a mess of regret and self-loathing, and each transformation only adds to his sense of failure. Years of childhood abuse only exacerbate these feelings, which, in turn, manifest in the Hulk. He’s also no stranger to depression; at his lowest, he traveled to the Alaskan arctic to commit suicide, reasoning that if the gun didn’t kill him, the sheer cold would. (Neither worked).
Despite these issues (and his own low self-worth), Bruce is a hero. He takes his responsibilities very seriously; in his mind, the Hulk is his fault, and he chose to ruin his own life and career in an effort to make up for that. He’s compassionate, clever, and definitely resourceful, and is driven to find a cure to the point of obsession -- understandably, since doing so might mean he gets some semblance of his life back.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Bruce is, currently, celibate by necessity. Given that an increased heart rate is a trigger for the Hulk, sex isn’t something he can afford to risk. He’s also still in love with his former girlfriend Betty Ross, even though he’s resigned himself to removing himself from her life. That being said, he’s a sappy, shy romantic of the worst kind -- he’s never been one for casual sex, and is monogamous by nature.
Powers:
+ Intelligence: Bruce is a genius. The leading expert on gamma radiation, he is also well versed in genetics, chemistry, and biology, and is an extremely competent engineer. If he can’t get what he needs, he’ll make it in a cave, with a box of scraps out of whatever is lying around, literally.
+ Survival: Five years of running has taught Bruce a lot about surviving and what, exactly, a man can do without. In Bruce’s case, he can do without pretty much everything, except for occasionally food. He’s lived in the slums, begged in gutters, and roughed it from deserts to jungles and everything in between -- all while running from the military, keeping himself off the radar, and searching for a cure. If he goes to ground, finding him can be incredibly difficult.
+ Toxic blood: Like the first two, this isn’t a power per se, but but it should probably be noted that Bruce’s blood is extremely toxic. Even a small exposure (such as a couple drops mixed in with a soda that someone happens to take a sip of) is enough to induce convulsions and radiation poisoning/gamma sickness. Bruce is well aware of this, and thus is hilariously paranoid about his blood.
+ The Hulk: The Hulk is everything Bruce isn’t: strong where Bruce is weak, fearless where Bruce is hesitant, and very nearly indestructible. He is Bruce’s darker emotional issues given shape and will, a monster created from childhood abuse and gamma radiation.
The Hulk’s Abilities:
The Hulk's abilities are dependent on his level of rage -- the angrier he is, the stronger he gets. As there’s potentially no limit to his rage, he’s one of the strongest characters in the Marvel universe. Although he doesn’t posses Banner’s sheer intellect, the Hulk has, very occasionally, insightful flashes of his own. As the Hulk, Banner can only remember bits and pieces of what happens, but his own thoughts and ideas are able to exert a limited amount of influence on the Hulk’s actions.
+ Super-strength
+ Healing factor
+ Increased speed/stamina/leaping ability
+ Resistance to telepathy
+ Resistance to bullets/missiles/knives/etc.
While the Hulk may be considered Bruce’s ‘power’, he sees it as nothing more than a curse, and is determined to find a way of ridding himself of it forever. And for good reason -- the Hulk is uncontrollable, fuelled by rage, and impossibly destructive. The life he had been making for himself was pretty much destroyed with the birth of the Hulk, and Bruce wants nothing more than that life back.
Also, changing to and from the Hulk is not only painful, it’s hell on his body. Changing back usually causes Bruce to pass out, and once his body is recharged enough to wake up, he pretty much has a hangover from hell -- nausea, disorientation, headaches, the works. He’ll try and sleep most of it off, if he can, but it takes a few days for Bruce to completely recover.
Reason for playing: Bete Noire is the kind of place where Bruce would be forced to test his control. Because of the nature of the city, he can’t retreat from the rest of the world and avoid interaction -- instead, he’d almost be forced to get to know people, even if only in passing. The pressure the city would put on him re: his darker nature would be interesting to explore, as would the fact that, with so many people from so many different worlds, he might actually be able to formulate a cure using what they know.