(no subject)
/PLAYER
NAME: Ian
JOURNAL: pridefall
IM: MSN | tiamat_56@msn.com
YIM | arcantic_artistry
AIM | nvncilaniix
E-MAIL: tiamat_56@msn.com
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Jonathan “The Scarecrow” Crane
FANDOM: The Batman Mythos
CHRONOLOGY: Directly after the events in Batman: The Long Halloween.
BACKGROUND: Jonathan Crane was born out of wedlock to Karen Keeny and her lover, Gerald Crane, sometime in the mid- to late- 1970s. Considered a bastard child, he was to be put to death shortly after his birth, and would have been were it not for the interference of his great-grandmother, who felt that she could mold Jonathan into something other than a blemish on the family name if she had a chance.
This act of kindness, however, was born not of any of sense of propriety on his great-grandmother’s part, as the woman - a god-fearing, sheltered, and abusive woman at the best of times - would constantly treat Jonathan no better than she would a slave.
Attending school was also no easy task for him, as his classmates (who had long since dubbed him “Scarecrow” due to how hitting him felt like hitting a bundle of straw) would often ostracize Jonathan for his lanky, waifish appearance.
Things later came to a head while, during one of her routine dustings, his great-grandmother happened upon a book containing some of the works of James Joyce hidden underneath Jonathan's bed. Disgusted and outraged over the apparent “eroticism” inherent to Joyce’s work, she accused Jonathan of being dirty and sinful, and once again dragged her grandson out to the chapel behind her estate, locking him inside so that he could await his punishment.
The crows came, as they always did, in a flurry of black feathers and beaks, pecking and harassing Jonathan as if he were the largest piece of carrion they had ever seen. Jonathan tried his best to save himself, to protect his eyes and neck, as he knew he should have, but it was little use - though they were wild, the crows were somehow driven to attack him, as if by some sort of --
-- Jonathan poured over the science books he owned, trying to excavate the answers from their pages. It wouldn’t be until one faithful night, much later, that the budding psychologist would discover the method to his great-grandmother’s madness.
It was ingenious, really: the woman boiled a rat for several minutes, simmering it in various oils and herbs grown in her own garden before she gutted and then rang the blood of a rat onto the very suit she forced him to wear every time she took him to the chapel. She would then take the rat’s corpse leave it on the shoulders of the scarecrow guarding the cornfield, an act that, even during a storm, would call the crows to feast.
It is in this moment that Jonathan Crane is catalyzed; in this moment that he realizes that Fear and Control are the only two forces in the entire world that matter. He copies his great-grandmother’s “fear formula,” and, through rigorous experimentation, manages to synthesize an airborne version of it - this breakthrough, however, is far from successful. Though the formula works, it doesn’t create the effect he intends to, which make him realize that he needs to learn more about the nature of fear, rather than its effects.
Enter Gotham City University. It is here, surrounded by men and women who share his thirst for science and the unknown, that Crane realizes that fear is a thing processed by the brain, and not the eyes. He studies fervently, almost obsessed with the subject, and soon obtains a PHD in both Abnormal and Cognitive Psychology, and a PSY D. in Clinical psychology, specializing in the study and treatment of phobias. For ten long years, he works as a Professor of Psychology at Gotham University, where many considered him a prodigy.
That is, until, one day, while Jonathan was attending a lecture being given by one of his friends - a Professor by the name of Pigeon - he stood up and shot a blank round at a student to "prove a point” he thought Pigeon could not make.
“Robert Stanton nearly had a heart-attack that term!”
“All of my students nearly received straight A’s that term.”
Crane, of course, was dismissed for his actions, losing his tenure, his prestige, and any hope he had of ever truly “fitting in.”
It is here that “The Scarecrow” is born. The rest, as they say, is comic books history.
POWER: Canon; Here, minus the ability to turn into the freaky scare-beast thinger.
Portal; the innate ability to create a medium amount of microfilament wires that he can either use as weapons (ala Walter Dornez, of Hellsing fame) or attach to his victims’ central nervous system, enabling Jonathan to cause them to experience any level of pain or pleasure he so chooses. The microfilament wires also allow Jonathan to control his victim’s physical senses -- as the wires work by using electric impulses -- making them see, hear, or speak whatever/whenever he wants them to. He cannot control more than three people in this way, and he must be less than one-hundred feet away for the wires to take full effect.
CLASS: Villain.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Scarecrow
ALTER EGO: Jonathan Crane
FIRST PERSON:
[ Scarecrow]
A|_|_ in th℮ golden afternoon
Full leisurely we g_l_i_de;
For both our ors, with little skill,
By l-i-t-t-l-e arms are plied,
While littlE HANDS make vein prêt_ense
Our w@nderings to guide
We’ve f a l l e n down the rabbit-hole, and Iron-Men do say: give a little, get a little, and clean the status-quo will stay.
What are you afraid of?
xxx
[Jonathan]
Well, this is certainly…different; not quite better or worse, of course, but wherever this is, is assuredly… different. Like a breath of fresh air after tasting nothing but smog. Is it a new beginning, I wonder? Heaven and all of that?.
Hm.
I doubt it
I’ve never been one to really travel outside of the sphere of where I’ve grown comfortable, so please do excuse any ignorance on my part; it’s not everyday you’re transported to a new city by a man hiding himself away in a suit of iron.
xxx
THIRD PERSON:
Fear.
It was the only thing that mattered in the eyes of the world, all that made its people bear arms or lie down to die while their timers slowly counted down to zero. Fear made the masses take action, made the fervent bear arms against those who had wronged them while everyone else looked away. Monarchs used the thing as a tool to quell their empires, while Tyrants carved their way into the history books through its abuse, forever labeling themselves as “evil” or “depraved.”
Jonathan peers at the dark skyline of Gotham as the plane he’s on slowly descends onto the runway. Holding his breath only momentarily, he counts how many people do the same around him, paying special attention to the gentlemen who vomits just as the wheels of the plane scrape against the concrete, thud-thud-thud-screeeeeeech.
“All passengers may now de-board the plane; thank you for flying American!”
Everyone exhales except for the man who had vomited. Jonathan smiles as he leaves his seat, casually bumping into the man hard enough to send him into another fit of nausea.
For what he has planned, for what he wants to create, all fine touch and a little sleight of hand was all that was necessary.
Later that night, the Scarecrow is running. He leaps across the rooftops, backtracking here and there when he feels that glare, feels that presence burn into the back of his neck, angry and foreboding like the cocked fist of an old-testament god. The chase never lasts for as long as he imagines it would; never really progresses into a study of the supernatural, into the how’s and why’s of the Bat’s speed and how he can almost be everywhere at once. (Jonathan thinks this is because, whenever he gets anywhere new with his thoughts --)
The boot comes in like a pitch-black hurricane, spinning all of Jonathan’s world upside down and back again. He counts his teeth purely on instinct when he lands face-first on the ground, and spits out the glob of blood building somewhere near the back of his mouth, pushing himself to his feet so that he can stare into his assailant’s eyes.
“Crane.”
Behind his mask, he smiles.
“Bat.”
He imagines that the Batman never smiles. That this dark, imposing figure is not human, and cannot make mistakes.
“You know what’s going to happen next.”
This allows him to distance himself from the man; allows for clinical study and inspection. (Perhaps they shared as similar past? Perhaps, and this was key, the reason why the chase never lasted was because the Batman had every step planned out already, and he could never--)
“Do I?”
A new fear serum was all he needed. A simple, unexplained element added to any social interaction always led to…well, in this case, an explosion that rocks the city to its foundations, lightning up the sky for miles.
“Methinks,” Jonathan says, almost allowing himself to smile. “That you have bigger fish to fry, yeah?”
Duplicity never tasted so sweet.
NAME: Ian
JOURNAL: pridefall
IM: MSN | tiamat_56@msn.com
YIM | arcantic_artistry
AIM | nvncilaniix
E-MAIL: tiamat_56@msn.com
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Jonathan “The Scarecrow” Crane
FANDOM: The Batman Mythos
CHRONOLOGY: Directly after the events in Batman: The Long Halloween.
BACKGROUND: Jonathan Crane was born out of wedlock to Karen Keeny and her lover, Gerald Crane, sometime in the mid- to late- 1970s. Considered a bastard child, he was to be put to death shortly after his birth, and would have been were it not for the interference of his great-grandmother, who felt that she could mold Jonathan into something other than a blemish on the family name if she had a chance.
This act of kindness, however, was born not of any of sense of propriety on his great-grandmother’s part, as the woman - a god-fearing, sheltered, and abusive woman at the best of times - would constantly treat Jonathan no better than she would a slave.
Attending school was also no easy task for him, as his classmates (who had long since dubbed him “Scarecrow” due to how hitting him felt like hitting a bundle of straw) would often ostracize Jonathan for his lanky, waifish appearance.
Things later came to a head while, during one of her routine dustings, his great-grandmother happened upon a book containing some of the works of James Joyce hidden underneath Jonathan's bed. Disgusted and outraged over the apparent “eroticism” inherent to Joyce’s work, she accused Jonathan of being dirty and sinful, and once again dragged her grandson out to the chapel behind her estate, locking him inside so that he could await his punishment.
The crows came, as they always did, in a flurry of black feathers and beaks, pecking and harassing Jonathan as if he were the largest piece of carrion they had ever seen. Jonathan tried his best to save himself, to protect his eyes and neck, as he knew he should have, but it was little use - though they were wild, the crows were somehow driven to attack him, as if by some sort of --
-- Jonathan poured over the science books he owned, trying to excavate the answers from their pages. It wouldn’t be until one faithful night, much later, that the budding psychologist would discover the method to his great-grandmother’s madness.
It was ingenious, really: the woman boiled a rat for several minutes, simmering it in various oils and herbs grown in her own garden before she gutted and then rang the blood of a rat onto the very suit she forced him to wear every time she took him to the chapel. She would then take the rat’s corpse leave it on the shoulders of the scarecrow guarding the cornfield, an act that, even during a storm, would call the crows to feast.
It is in this moment that Jonathan Crane is catalyzed; in this moment that he realizes that Fear and Control are the only two forces in the entire world that matter. He copies his great-grandmother’s “fear formula,” and, through rigorous experimentation, manages to synthesize an airborne version of it - this breakthrough, however, is far from successful. Though the formula works, it doesn’t create the effect he intends to, which make him realize that he needs to learn more about the nature of fear, rather than its effects.
Enter Gotham City University. It is here, surrounded by men and women who share his thirst for science and the unknown, that Crane realizes that fear is a thing processed by the brain, and not the eyes. He studies fervently, almost obsessed with the subject, and soon obtains a PHD in both Abnormal and Cognitive Psychology, and a PSY D. in Clinical psychology, specializing in the study and treatment of phobias. For ten long years, he works as a Professor of Psychology at Gotham University, where many considered him a prodigy.
That is, until, one day, while Jonathan was attending a lecture being given by one of his friends - a Professor by the name of Pigeon - he stood up and shot a blank round at a student to "prove a point” he thought Pigeon could not make.
“Robert Stanton nearly had a heart-attack that term!”
“All of my students nearly received straight A’s that term.”
Crane, of course, was dismissed for his actions, losing his tenure, his prestige, and any hope he had of ever truly “fitting in.”
It is here that “The Scarecrow” is born. The rest, as they say, is comic books history.
POWER: Canon; Here, minus the ability to turn into the freaky scare-beast thinger.
Portal; the innate ability to create a medium amount of microfilament wires that he can either use as weapons (ala Walter Dornez, of Hellsing fame) or attach to his victims’ central nervous system, enabling Jonathan to cause them to experience any level of pain or pleasure he so chooses. The microfilament wires also allow Jonathan to control his victim’s physical senses -- as the wires work by using electric impulses -- making them see, hear, or speak whatever/whenever he wants them to. He cannot control more than three people in this way, and he must be less than one-hundred feet away for the wires to take full effect.
CLASS: Villain.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Scarecrow
ALTER EGO: Jonathan Crane
FIRST PERSON:
[ Scarecrow]
A|_|_ in th℮ golden afternoon
Full leisurely we g_l_i_de;
For both our ors, with little skill,
By l-i-t-t-l-e arms are plied,
While littlE HANDS make vein prêt_ense
Our w@nderings to guide
We’ve f a l l e n down the rabbit-hole, and Iron-Men do say: give a little, get a little, and clean the status-quo will stay.
What are you afraid of?
xxx
[Jonathan]
Well, this is certainly…different; not quite better or worse, of course, but wherever this is, is assuredly… different. Like a breath of fresh air after tasting nothing but smog. Is it a new beginning, I wonder? Heaven and all of that?.
Hm.
I doubt it
I’ve never been one to really travel outside of the sphere of where I’ve grown comfortable, so please do excuse any ignorance on my part; it’s not everyday you’re transported to a new city by a man hiding himself away in a suit of iron.
xxx
THIRD PERSON:
Fear.
It was the only thing that mattered in the eyes of the world, all that made its people bear arms or lie down to die while their timers slowly counted down to zero. Fear made the masses take action, made the fervent bear arms against those who had wronged them while everyone else looked away. Monarchs used the thing as a tool to quell their empires, while Tyrants carved their way into the history books through its abuse, forever labeling themselves as “evil” or “depraved.”
Jonathan peers at the dark skyline of Gotham as the plane he’s on slowly descends onto the runway. Holding his breath only momentarily, he counts how many people do the same around him, paying special attention to the gentlemen who vomits just as the wheels of the plane scrape against the concrete, thud-thud-thud-screeeeeeech.
“All passengers may now de-board the plane; thank you for flying American!”
Everyone exhales except for the man who had vomited. Jonathan smiles as he leaves his seat, casually bumping into the man hard enough to send him into another fit of nausea.
For what he has planned, for what he wants to create, all fine touch and a little sleight of hand was all that was necessary.
Later that night, the Scarecrow is running. He leaps across the rooftops, backtracking here and there when he feels that glare, feels that presence burn into the back of his neck, angry and foreboding like the cocked fist of an old-testament god. The chase never lasts for as long as he imagines it would; never really progresses into a study of the supernatural, into the how’s and why’s of the Bat’s speed and how he can almost be everywhere at once. (Jonathan thinks this is because, whenever he gets anywhere new with his thoughts --)
The boot comes in like a pitch-black hurricane, spinning all of Jonathan’s world upside down and back again. He counts his teeth purely on instinct when he lands face-first on the ground, and spits out the glob of blood building somewhere near the back of his mouth, pushing himself to his feet so that he can stare into his assailant’s eyes.
“Crane.”
Behind his mask, he smiles.
“Bat.”
He imagines that the Batman never smiles. That this dark, imposing figure is not human, and cannot make mistakes.
“You know what’s going to happen next.”
This allows him to distance himself from the man; allows for clinical study and inspection. (Perhaps they shared as similar past? Perhaps, and this was key, the reason why the chase never lasted was because the Batman had every step planned out already, and he could never--)
“Do I?”
A new fear serum was all he needed. A simple, unexplained element added to any social interaction always led to…well, in this case, an explosion that rocks the city to its foundations, lightning up the sky for miles.
“Methinks,” Jonathan says, almost allowing himself to smile. “That you have bigger fish to fry, yeah?”
Duplicity never tasted so sweet.