[SP] Application: Bruce Wayne | BATMAN // DC Comics
Character Information
General
Canon Source: DC Comics
Canon Format: Comic books
Character's Name: Bruce Wayne / Batman
Character's Age: This is complicated. Let’s put it as mid-thirties since Dick is in his mid-twenties, and Bruce adopted Dick a year after he became Batman. Dick would’ve been 8-10 at the time, and Bruce 20-21 or so. A dozen or so years have passed. Let’s not go into Jason and Tim’s ages, okay?
Mid-thirties work.
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. N/A
What form will your character's NV take? It is a Batphone.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
No powers. But one might say that Bruce Wayne is the greatest mind of the DC universe and one will not be wrong.
His greatest ability is his mind-he’s ‘the World’s Greatest Detective’, a master tactician, and a skilled strategist. He’s able to out-think practically everyone in his universe, and many a villain’s plans have been foiled because of this ability. And Bruce also has a special little thing called his utter paranoia, which makes sure that he always out-thinks everyone-he gets to know all about their strengths and weaknesses, he categorises them and makes notes about them, and he creates entire contingency strategies to take them down, just in case.
No, he doesn’t just do this to his enemies. He does this to every single person he knows, from his enemies the Joker and Ra’s al Ghul to his best friend Clark Kent and his teammates at the Justice League. There’s an entire, very famous, storyline called The Tower of Babel that basically shows that Batman has a contingency plan to take out every single Justice League member, and he’s really, really not kind about it.
Oh, and he has a contingency plan to take himself out too. That plan’s name is Robin.
There’s also the fact that his intelligence makes learning pretty much everything a piece of cake for him. At the risk of making him sound like a Canon Sue, Bruce Wayne canonically is: an engineer, a multilinguist, a computer programmer, a hacker, an organic chemist, a physicist, a biologist, a biochemist, a forensic analyst, a pilot, a racecar driver, a shrewd businessman and CEO, spelunker, archaeologist, and many, many other things. He travelled a lot in his youth, you see, and part of that travelling basically comes down to ‘learning every skill known to man and excelling at it within a few weeks’. There are entire plots and arcs that are solved by the simple fact that Batman knows the exact skill needed to take down this villain.
For example: Rock of the Ages, by Grant Morrison. Lex Luthor tries a corporate takeover of the Justice League, and Batman goes: “Haha, you may be good at corporate takeovers, Luthor, but I’m better. Because I’m Bruce Wayne.”
Besides his mind, Bruce has also trained his body very, very well. He’s one of the greatest hand-to-hand fighters in the DC Universe, and could fight on par with deadly assassins such as David Cain, Lady Shiva, and Deathstroke. He’s trained in basically every single martial arts known, and developed his own style that takes advantage of all the best parts of them. A normal person without powers going up against him will find it very difficult to defeat him.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them?
Two things that define Batman's image: His relationship with Gotham, and the way he's the most comfortable in the shadows. So his abilities in the Siren's Port will reflect upon that.
One, he will be able to meld into the city's shadows and to travel within them. Note: only the shadows of the city. As in shadows cast by city and city-related things. So Section 7, the beach, the dock and the port, and even the fairgrounds - he can't move within those shadows. They aren't populated enough to be considered city areas. Sector 7 is suburban. In addition, when it's the day, he can only appear in places where the buildings cast a huge enough shadow that can fit his body. Without the two conditions: city and shadow, he'd have to basically just be the normal Batman.
Two. In Gotham, Bruce is also said that he almost has a psychic connection to the city. In the Siren's Port, his abilities will include that. He has a psychic connection to the Port, and he can hear it, and hear whatever the she sees/hears. Unfortunately, the Port is a capricious mistress, and Batman is terrible at actually relying on his powers, so a lot of the time she absolutely refuses to tell him something, or go completely silent. The thing he hears the most frequently are cries for help during the Darkness, and he can move to that area and save whoever who needs help. The Port might also warn him if something terrible is going to happen to him because of the city - for example, if the bridge he's standing on is going to collapse, he'll know before it does. Technically, he can find people, find out about what is happening, and even spy upon anyone within the Port, but due to his own attitudes and the Port herself being who she is, he generally can't. This also keeps me from godmodding and infomodding.
Two abilities, but depending on the situation, he might express the knowledge that they even exist and not use them at all. Also, the use of that city knowledge directed at any player character is strictly by-permissions-only or mod-approved plot-specific
Weapons: He'll have his utility belt with him, fully stocked, because Granny Goodness and Desaad didn't bother to take away anything when they tried to kill him. This basically means that he has his batarangs with him, knives, along with explosives, chemicals, antitoxins (for Ivy's toxins and Crane's fear toxin and generic poisons), penicillin, morphine and other such assorted painkillers, a heat dispersal device (for Mr. Freeze)... His utility belt is magical and has a lot of things in it. Generally, if he needs it, it can fit into one of his pouches, it's there.
Oh, there's a gun too. No bullets, though. He used it to shoot Darkseid and it's with him when he is shot with the Omega Sanction.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman_%28Bruce_Wayne%29
http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/Batman_Wiki
The first link covers his general history. The second link is more comprehensive, and the third link is almost the same as the second link, but with more information about Bruce Wayne in general. The last link is the most informative.
Point in Canon: From right after he’s been shot by Darkseid’s Omega Sanction in Final Crisis 6.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: N/A
Character Personality:
Everyone knows this story: a boy is born to happily married parents, and he had a great childhood. Then one day, when he was eight years old, he went to a production of Zorro, and when they got out of the theatre, his parents were threatened by a robber. He shot the poor boy’s father first, then the mother, before running away and leaving the child soaking in twin pools of his parents’ blood. Scarred by this experience, the boy - Bruce Wayne - vows to never let something like this happen again. He travels the world, gains experience and, finally, returns to his hometown Gotham and dressed like a bat to fight crime.
But that is not the whole of the story, is it? Because, you see, hundreds of children see their parents die daily, weekly. Very little of them, even in the DC universe, decide to go on a crusade to get rid of all crime, much less to dress up in a costume and punch out criminals himself. There’s just something about Bruce that makes him predisposed to becoming Batman.
It’s his sheer, utter intensity. His capacity of obsession to the point of blinding himself to everything else. No normal person would become a man driven completely by a mission because of one thing that happened in their childhood, much less letting that mission drive them throughout their entire life, leaving no space for anything else. No normal, sane person would think that the best way to express his love for his city by dressing up as a bat, beating up villains, while putting on a vapid persona in public so people would think that he didn’t give a shit. Most people simply don’t do that kind of thing.
Bruce... isn’t a normal person. That much is apparently. He’s incredibly, incredibly intense, in many ways. The first and most apparent is his ability to master every skill that he sets out to do; his sheer mental focus when he concentrates on learning something such that he becomes very good at it in a very short time. Canonically, he has highly developed skills in piloting, organic chemistry, engineering, business administration (even though he has a reputation as a vapid playboy, he’s shown to be able to out-play Lex Luthor, who does this for a living openly), forensics analysis, physics, biology, biochemistry... and a million other things. If the plot requires him to be good at it, he probably is.
Except cooking. He seems to be magically terrible at cooking. It’s part of why Alfred owns his ass.
And, of course, he’s the World’s Greatest Detective. Which means that he’s also very observant, has very good analytic skills, generally knows things way before everyone else, and is clever enough to figure out ways to defeat even the most powerful of beings. This sometimes has been overused by writers who assert that he knows everything, and that he can defeat everyone if he knew enough about them-but generally, Bruce has limitations. Normal, human limitations. Sometimes, he’s wrong. Sometimes, he doesn’t know everything. It wasn’t shown often, but he does.
It might make him sound perfect, but Bruce’s greatest flaw is that though he is highly intelligent, though he is a great martial artist, his emotional maturity remains that of an eight-year-old kneeling in the alley, trying to not cry as he watched his parents bled out in front of him. The Batman way of showing that he cares about someone is to never tell them about it, to keep endless surveillance on them, run background checks on all of their loved ones... and, of course, keeping notes on ways to take that loved one down if that person has powers. Just in case they are ever mind-controlled and used against Batman.
Just ask the Justice League during the Tower of Babel incident. Did I mention that Bruce is intensely, intensely paranoid? His tactically ability and way of thinking means that he knows all the ways that his friends and allies can kill him, whether willingly or through mind-control, and he keeps records of how to take them down as a contingency measure.
He is so emotionally stunted that most of the people he cares about-the Bat-family, as coined by fans-generally didn’t think that they matter much to him. For example, Jason Todd’s death devastated him, and he literally lost control for a few weeks after the boy’s death and came really close to breaking his moral code and the Joker. But Bruce is so incapable of showing what he feels that when Jason came back from the dead, he believes so incredibly deeply that Bruce doesn’t care for him that he turns into the criminal Red Hood. Because Batman never told him that he cares, that he grieves, that Jason’s death tears him up inside, that he sees it as his greatest failure-no, instead, he keeps Jason’s uniform in a glass case in the Cave and stares at it mournfully every single day.
So. Emotional stupidity. To the extremes.
And that’s another notable thing about Bruce: his very strong moral code; his stringent sense of what is Right and Wrong. Batman does not kill, ever. When Jason Todd, resurrected as the Red Hood and angry that Bruce didn’t kill the Joker for killing him, Bruce was so unwilling to kill the Joker that he slit the Red Hood’s throat for it. Jason lived, of course-the wound wasn’t fatal-but it proves just the extreme that Bruce was willing to go to in order to keep his moral code.
Of course, that had a very good reason. Remember his intensity? Bruce knew that if he crosses the line, if he kills-he will never stop killing. In a canon alternate universe (comics canon, I love it), known as Earth-51, Batman did kill the Joker after the latter killed Jason. And then he figured that since he had crossed the line, he might as well go the whole way-he ended up killing every single villain in that world. Bruce doesn’t do things halfway: if he crosses the line, he will go so over it that he ends up in another galaxy.
Did I mention his intensity and obsession yet?
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: N/A
Character Plans: I'm going to separate this section into three parts.
Batman: Right now he just has to deal with the very, very extensive Batman rogues gallery that is in the Port, to find out what they have done so far, to find out what alliances they've forged, who have been fighting against them and what methods they have used... In a sense he's also very possessive over his rogues? So basically he's going to be stupid and be all like "Well I'm here now, so I'll deal with them and all of you can screw off", which will definitely generate conflict. And eventually he'll slowly learn to work with them against the villains.
Bruce Wayne: He's going to try to... find a way to get a powerful position in Siren's Port. Mostly he's going to abandon the Brucie Wayne demeanor and don the 'capable CEO' mask, even though he's probably still going to be a kind of 'idiot savant. He's definitely going to flaunt that he has business experience to get as high a position as possible. Because of two things: he wants the influence, and he needs the cash to finance Batman. Then, really, depending on what happens, he's going to try to move things around until it fits him.
Matches Malone: Depending on the mob situation, Bruce is going to pull out Matches Malone to help deal with the Rogues Gallery - particularly Black Mask - and also basically all the villains in Siren's Port. He's going to try to insinuate himself into one of the groups in one way or another.
Basically: Batman takes over the crazy supervillain crimefighting side, Bruce Wayne looks over the companies and the business affairs, and Matches Malone deals with the basic profiteering villains, the bounty hunters... That sort of thing.
Yes. SP is his new Gotham. He's going to have a finger in everything. How else is he going to keep an eye on the island?
Appearance/PB: Christian Bale for my Live Action PB, but he has black hair and blue eyes, and he's 6'2 instead of 6'0.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[ There's pure darkness on the screen, ink black except--hah, you could tell that there was something there, hiding in the shadows. The light glances across- him? it?, skittered like an oil slick. Then, something peeled off from the shadows.
A flash of white lenses. A pair of eyes, perhaps? But there is no body shown. It's like there is a ghost- except it speaks. A low, harsh growl. Like what all those monsters in your closet and under your bed and in the cupboard under the stairs might sound like if they are more than a figment of your imagination. ]
Siren's Port. You've heard of me. I'm the Batman.
[ And there's a fluttering sound. Like a thousand bat wings taking flight--or the movement of a thick, synthetic fibre cape. A shift, and there's a crack in the shadow- a glint of teeth. ]
You. Your fun is over now.
You know who you are.
Third Person Sample
It felt like a fire had been lit from the inside. Scorching him, inside out, up and down, and he threw his head back- the only reason why he didn't scream was because he couldn't breathe. Maybe more than that - because his throat had been burnt to ashes and he didn't know how he was still thinking because the heat was taking-
over-
Cold.
Cold beneath his knees. The feel of concrete. Bruce's eyes were still closed, but he slammed a hand down. Spread it out. Felt the smooth of the concrete even through his glove. Cold, hard and smooth- he ran it upwards- nothing. Down- nothing. Left- not- there, the barest bump, and a change in the texture. More like plastic than concrete. It squeaked a little beneath his fingers.
So he could hear, then. He still wasn't going to open his eyes yet.
Somehow he wasn't flat on his back or his stomach, but on one knee, the other drawn up to his chest. A battle-ready position - was he brought here to be attacked? Where was he? The last he remembered was the burn of Darkseid's Omega Sanction, and he didn't think that Darkseid wouldn't kill him. And he didn't make mistakes. So he was dead, and he was sent somewhere- a peculiar sort of afterlife, perhaps?
A certain sort for people who didn't believe in that kind of thing. Bruce Wayne- Batman certainly would fit that category. There was no Heaven for him, and he believed in no Hell. Only Earth- only the universe, which had capabilities for both.
Whatever this place was- either the person who brought him here was a fool or he wanted Brue to have a fighting chance. Even while still kneeling with both hands on the ground he could feel the weight of the utility belt on his waist. It was filled. Granny Goodness and Desaad's minions didn't think to disarm him - all of them fools, really. They underestimated him, and he killed (and he was pretty sure that Darkseid was dead) Darkseid in return for their carelessness. He opened his eyes.
A baseball diamond. Unexpected. Bruce flexed his hand, and noted that there were no burn marks on the glove. Though, his suit was still as tattered as they were previously- white coats. Out of the corner of his eyes. Doctors. Ushering in newcomers- others like him. Not good. Not good.
Immediately, before his brain even caught up to what his eyes have seen, Bruce was already standing up, darting to the nearest shadows- there, in the corner, with the bleachers. Within a few seconds he had the suit stripped until only the black short pants are remaining, along with the boots. And he was bundling everything into a small, black, square package. Then, he took out a batarang from his belt and deliberately cut a shallow wound against his cheek, all the way down to his jaw. It wouldn't scar, but it would be really distracting. The weapon went back into the belt and under the cape.
Very deliberately, he slammed his shoulder against a bleacher and-
"Ow!"
Lowering his eyes, and keeping his head down, he held the cape-wrapped package against his face as he clumsily stumbled out of the shadows and into the arms of the doctors.