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Date: 2012-11-07 08:05 am (UTC)From:Bruce is a tricky character to play--and I'd argue he's even harder to play from the Nolanverse, in my opinion. I really regret dropping Crane because it means I didn't get a chance to play with you.
Basically, please keep up the good work. Especially since Bruce is so difficult. You manage just the right about of charm and paranoia and balance it out with his need to do what's right.
Stay awesome!
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Date: 2012-11-22 03:14 pm (UTC)From:Actually not getting to play with your Crane was the one disappointment that I've hold onto since getting in, he was honestly brilliant, and a villain doing villainous things on board, and just so much kudos for that. I got Nathan into the game just before the fear gas event, which I loved, and Crane was an inspiration to Bruce's Silent Hill plot stuff as well, proving just how much of an influence your first masked crazy can be.
So basically thank you again, and just know that if you ever did bring Crane back terrible things would happen. I'd make sure of it.
Response to hmd 18/09/15
Date: 2015-09-18 02:56 pm (UTC)From:Hello. First of all thank you for your well structured and considered concrit, I appreciate the time and detail you went into with it, and I'll try to respond with the same courtesy by both sorting through my motivations ICly and OOCly (as both are important), and hopefully explaining them so as they make sense. In advance: this may get long, and leave out detail I'm willing to extrapolate on, if asked, because, if I may point out, Bruce is a complex character. In my opinion, his existence in Nolanverse isn't standalone, but itself built from decades of comics verse, and sometimes a single scene asks us to observe it not only in its own context but as it is in regard to its accompanying mythos. I realize that in saying this I may be directly contradicting any suggestion that I play Nolan's version, but I do believe, and have to admit, that in terms of his film depiction, without strong adoption from the mythos he wouldn't exist as he is at all.
That said, I come to the character, personally, without a strong background in comic books myself. I didn't pick up a comic at all until four years after the release of Begins, and at once - in the space of about three weeks - read the Batman stories from #1 to #240 or something, before learning my lesson. I jumped forward to Year One, A Death in the Family and the Cataclysm arc, and have read nothing since then until recently, where I've taken pause to read A Long Halloween and TDKR and TDKSA, which I bought for the purpose. I'm explicit in the details here because I want you to know exactly which comics I've read and consequently where flavours, if there are any, could have seeped in from.
I'll be the first to admit that it's been twelve months or so since I last sat down to watch the movies, and the first to happily agree to watching them again. It's also been twelve very quiet, almost backburnerish months for Bruce in game. Up until recently, I've avoided conflict, and there have been months or two where I wasn't even remotely as active as a character like him should be. That also means that the game, too, hasn't been exposed to him, and I haven't sat down and scripted out in large detail why he's doing what he's doing, or thinking what he's thinking--that's on me. The intensity of playing him the last two months has exposed, even to me, that there are some flaws in both my characterisation and my ooc communication, as you can see in the comments above this one.
Before I go into the points you've raised explicitly, I'd like to say how playing him isn't just about playing the character as ICly as possible. There is a lot of juggling and logistics that go into it OOCly that will occasionally force me to make a jump and then entangle IC reasons around it. For example, regarding Crane being in the game in general, and Bruce not immediately doing something about it, required a work around which it could be arguably said isn't in character. He knew what Crane would do, what he was doing, and he let people die. That is so wrong, so utterly incorrect of a character like him who is prepared for everything, who can predict people's personality, motivations and actions as he does to a T, but likewise crucial that it be worked around because if not, I would have stunted Crane's playability in game to an impossible degree. It's just one of the logistical problems that have to be considered before I even think about his motivations and as illustrated above it does and must color his characterisation.
Another problem I often face when asking 'Shall I do this?' is what I call legacy playability. In a long and continuing game like this one, where many itterations of Bruce Wayne have existed, and where all have protected his identity, am I going to be the one who blows it out of the water? Adaptions have to be made in order to ensure that I don't screw up and leave a nasty mess in the future, should I at any point drop Batman and another app in his place. I am constantly aware of this responsibility, and it is an OOC, charging element of my choices regarding his need to reassert himself to Crane, for example.
So every action has a consequence: my biggest choice early in the game was for Bruce to make believe that he is DC's version of Batman. That was a choice he made ICly in order to differentiate between Nolanverse's Bruce Wayne being in game and the reappearence of the Batman, and was a choice made not only to protect his myth, Bruce Wayne's family, Alfred etc, both ICly and OOCly, but also to ensure that no Batman villain joins the game, meets a Batman who doesn't know him, and consequently starts killing people left, right and center. Remember this is a Batman who has already fought the Joker, and faced straight on the effects of 'Reveal yourself/don't reveal yourself' and how much his secret identity holds sway. So he pretends in public that Batman belongs to the other world, and as I've played with often that means he's skating on thin ice when it comes to interactions, and I think adds another dimension to what is a truly Nolanverse inspired choice.
Hand in hand with that, I think, came his "creation" of the Justice League, made in discussion with Clark who along with Alfred and Robin knew his secret early. Largely offscreen, and in a few very old tags, Bruce is very aware that he is working on forming a society that he knows absolutely nothing about, with people he's never met and may have to actually outright lie to to protect his identity. He deceives Hal, for example, which leads down its own path and to its own consequences, and he has used a great deal of his own energy on something he isn't essentially a part of because a) it's expected that Batman + Superman + Green Lantern = JL, and b) he can, in regard to the world of MoM and the anti-Russian, anti-American, continuing global crisis, see a use for a group that doesn't subscribe itself to a government, and can act above it. He is aware, as anyone who grew up in that timeframe is aware, of the shadow that Cold War threw on America, and has an instinctive aversion to this world based on its inability to let go of that power struggle. I could go into more detail of my thoughts on this, but it's irrelevant except tangentially in regard to "special" police forces and his mistrust of military officers in civil positions. His travels in Asia during a time frame of war and civil uprising would no doubt come up, but it is all extrapolated motive and has no explicit canon evidence.
Moving on to the very different topic of your first example. It's actually the one I had to most think about, honestly, since it's the one most affected by his journey mentally since coming to the game, and because I believe he is on a knife edge. Maybe it's something that came across in the reading of the comment, but I never meant it to be hopeless, otherwise the Bruce Wayne that is Nolan's depiction would be emotionally a hell of a lot more down on the topic than he is. We see a Batman that has given up on ever returning his city to its former glory in TDKR, briefly, and we see him literally thrown down as far as he can go. Moreover we see that he can fall that far, emotionally, that he's human. Also we see that his rising again is not about strength but spirit. The fact is that the version of Bruce that Nolan created is one that is Batman transiently, he sees a light at the end of the tunnel, and the Bruce that I brought here, unfortunately for him, comes right at the tipping point of his understanding of that. I drew him from the point where he and Harvey land, knowing that Dent is dead, and that the Dent act will die with it. Batman knows - because he thought up the solution in seconds after Dent's death canonically, and has had much longer in game to consider it - that the way to ensure the Dent act follows through is to take responsibility for those murders. This act is one part of the basis I used in my IC choice for him to defend Crane the way he has over this recent plot, but that's a whole other matter entirely and I'll get to it.
He also knows since coming to the game that there are a myriad of different versions of his universe, all of which contain a Bruce Wayne whose parents were murdered, and who became Batman, some of which where he has a family, all of which where he has continued to fight as Batman long after he - Nolan Bruce - would ever have considered signing on to play that role. He has been encumbered with the delivery that not only is being Batman something that he will never escape, if multiverse precedent is to be taken into account, but it's also something that will kill him before his time, and bring tragedy to the people around him. He's dealt with people in game who have lost him, and the effect that has on them - right from his first meetings with Alfred and Clark respectively.
So what am I saying? Bruce is depressed? I don't know, maybe not. He has a great system of internalization and dealing with emotional stresses, but Nolan's Bruce is human, and they get to him too. He compromises himself repeatedly for Rachel, and the scenes where his emotional detachment makes him snap or lose face with Rachel and Alfred and Lucius are crucial in regard to his character. He does not want to do this forever. Here he is in this situation, now without even Alfred as a sounding board - his feeling of inability to do the job anywhere near with the same skill as DC Bats HAS come up with Alfred before - and Bruce has no one to talk to even if he could. He is internalizing a lot of doubt and grief and loneliness, surrounded by people who know him but don't know him, and playing through this farce regardless. I don't linger on all of this in my tags, I admit that, and I've strayed off topic, but I just wanted to show you a window into the mindset I'm playing with at the point of this response.
But it's more subtle than that. This specific tag I was actually believe it or not really proud of. It's not hopeless. Despite everything I mention above, as I say, Bruce is still fighting, still resisting, even though it may cost him everything. He hasn't swallowed down into a pit of despair, closed all the doors and windows of the manor and decided to feel sorry for himself for the rest of eternity. It's talking about the resilience of the people of Gotham, not their hopelessness or inability to cope, just their better ability to cope, but mostly the entire tag isn't talking about "the people of Gotham" so much as it is talking about him, personally. Dick knows his backstory and about his loss, and his ability to come back fighting from it, and he knows Dick's backstory - thanks to Alfred - and that his resilience has held him through it. It's talking right to him on that level, but also since it's in public it's saying another thing entirely: Gotham's people may have been through shit, but they're stronger than you. He's saying that Crane too, as a product of Gotham, is consequently more dangerous for people who didn't grow up in such despair as Bruce himself and many others did, because he's been polished harder by his life in the city, and is consequently a sharper weapon, and that isn't him being arrogant, because the response to Crane as a villain, in game, has vindicated that justification. He is trying, essentially, to bring up his own unspoken points with Robin "the rich and poor alike" while also say to anyone who is also listening that he understands their agony, and their humiliation, but urge them to be stronger and less kneejerk in their response to it than they're being. He's not saying "Gotham will never change", because frankly he's bet his life and happiness on it - this version of Bruce has - because he doesn't want to be Batman forever. So all in all, I don't think it was hopelessness. I think hopelessness, if Bruce were really being affected by it in game, would take him down a much different path, but I do see how it can read like that and hope my explanation above gives view to a deeper insight.
When it comes to Gordon and Olivier, I have to approach it fresh. That one reply does not well encompass all of the concerns he has about Olivier, or the government, or the unjust way that RISE was forced on imPort society without any sense of choice. It comes from deep seated mistrust of secret police, military leaders in civil positions, and people whose authority is only subjected to scrutiny by a higher up, equally corrupt authority, which already largely manipulates its people, and has sensationalised imPort cooperation or lack of it before. He disagrees with her taking the position as head of the organization because it is unchecked, and wasn't established democratically, and when he brought up these concerns to her, they were largely dismissed.
Re: Response to hmd 18/09/15
Date: 2015-09-18 02:56 pm (UTC)From:Now that would never happen with Gordon. Gordon to Bruce is a different animal. Gordon was the one person, in all the chaos and tumult and noise surrounding the Wayne's shooting, that offered Bruce any genuine compassion, and he held onto that throughout his life. He sought Gordon out (I want to mention here that his use of secret identities was supported during this section of the novelisation of Batman Begins, and yes I did marry the Matches ID across from comics canon, but that was as a personal nod toward it, not any subversion) and decided that he could trust him alone out of all the police in the GCPD. Gordon has never let Bruce down, and even when he does resort to guns they are a subsidiary measure and not the meat of the plan - for example when he fakes his own death during the parade in TDK, there are snipers in place but they are not the meat of his plan. Furthermore he listens to his insight and expertise, while Olivier was combative in their interactions, regardless of whether she knew she was speaking to Batman or not.
In short, the middle and both ends of it is that Olivier has never done anything to make him believe that she is anything but a military officer holding a civil position; one who would feel like discharging a rocket launcher at any kind of import affair might be something necessary, who is freakishly prepared even by his own standards, and thinks nothing of putting weapons (okay, tranquilisers in this case, but she had live arms available) in the hands of just anyone. When I wrote that Gordon would never do such a thing, I was encompassing all of this, but it's definitely my bad for shorthanding it into my smalltext without showing more context. For this I blame the aforementioned lots of Batman in a short time, and most of it has been planned and implemented only over the last few days with haste off the back of the crit issued above, that nothing was being done yet to resolve the Crane situation. I haven't (even at this point) had a lot of sleep, cramming it all in to fit the narrow time frame.
Regarding the use of guns: despite his acceptance at allowing police officers to use them, even arming his own vehicles, I do believe that this is a necessary effect of the world and time he lives in. They exist and he had to deal with their existence; that doesn't mean he has to like it. The fact is that the longer arcs of Bruce's development as a person come from gun related issues (the shooting of his parents/almost shooting their killer himself/walking into Falcone's club and pointing that same gun at him). Guns are no doubt something that exists as a trigger for him, but it is beyond that the power that holding a weapon gives someone over someone else that he studies. At the summit of his training with Ducard he is asked to kill, and it's not with a gun, and he recognises the power that he's been given, and the power lost, just as he recognised it when he was the one without power, and Falcone didn't need a gun to overcome him. None the less, his longest arcs, before that realisation, were directly gun related, and sent him on long, low, emotional searches for himself, damaged his relationships with other people and distanced himself from who he had been and the world that knew him.
You bring up that he's not against killing. I think you're talking about 'well why is he protecting Crane anyway?', given your later point, so I'll address it as though you were. The fact is Crane put him into a situation where he had to make a choice, to hand him over forthwith to a person he'd already openly said he may not cooperate with given his aforementioned doubts of them, or refuse to do so and make himself their enemy. I didn't linger too much on the psychiatrists topic - it hasn't come up ICly at any point, and therefore if you think it unimaginable I can drop it - but 'dragged in the middle of the night' was bad wording. I never meant it to imply that it was being used as a weapon, but that Bruce - between a rock and a hard place - was looking for a suitable advocate for Crane's mental state whom he could pass him to as an intermediary to hand him to RISE, and see that his greatest concerns about him getting fair treatment were addressed. (for the record, re. our discussions, Crane would have handed said psych's asses to them and left them humiliated, not the other way around). I understand that Nolanverse Batman has demonstrated an end of the line attitude to his villains, but here, he has no reason to wash his hands of Crane and let the devil take him. Crane is his responsibility, he believes, and the one true connection to his home, his Gotham, his future, and a possible end to his time as Batman, that he has left. I'm not saying it's a healthy connection, but it's the only one he has, and the fact is that in addition to that, seeing Harvey - a collected, capable, alive Harvey, no matter where his descent is leading him now - gave him a little bit of optimism.
Furthermore, it serves his purpose to do so. As I've mentioned in one or two of my tags, he is acting in a revolutionary manner in this post and presently, acting deliberately outside the law, bringing down fire on himself the same way that he approached drawing attention to it with the corrupt Gotham PD. He's strung Falcone up, dropped Maroni off a balcony, tortured Flass for information, all in ways that were straight up vigilanteism, and I believe that for the right cause, he wouldn't hesitate to push those boundaries again. His actions - drawing attention to himself this way - reflect political motivations, but they are a hell of a lot more peaceful than the Joker's approach to finishing off corruption. This is a man who in a heartbeat accepts a string of murders to his name, I don't think this is vastly outside the realm of possibility.
Related to that previous point, as you say, is the "attempting to recreate his mythos" with Crane. I have to outright disagree with you on Crane not being terrified of Batman at the beginning of TDK. He gets a thrill out of Batman's arrival, versus those of the fakes that arrive shortly before. He's sassy, yes, he's beaming ear to ear, because Crane at the beginning of TDK is effectively a Crane that never recovered from his final experiences in Begins. He was exposed to a significant dose of his own medicine, and fear is - as has been stated in source material - his obsession. He feeds on it, delights on it, his own more than anyone else's. Furthermore, when Batman confronts Crane on the topic of Ra's al Ghul he drives him almost catatonic with terror, makes him disassociate (and in regard to your above point Bruce doesn't see any problem bending the rules of ethics to use Crane's exposure to his own drugs to terrify him there, or similarly with the Joker in TDK). Lisa and I have been back and forth over the topic over and over again between ourselves in the months since Bruce's identity came out, and fear of the Batman is something you should approach her on if you have concerns about it rather than me.
As for Bruce trying to rebuild it, it's far more about the power than the fear - as I touched on above, power and not a weapon - that he's trying to rebuild. Crane has lost all respect for him and that makes him more dangerous. Again, Lisa could reflect on that topic more. Now back to ooc logistics, since this comes into it: at the time of the fear in the Batman falling apart, Lisa was discussing the fact that in his contempt Crane has no reason to protect Bruce's identity, and in fact might blurt it spitefully, given that his pleasure at having fear in Batman was taken away from him. So we needed a solution. OOCly we needed a solution, because the IC consequences don't just effect me, they effect Alfred's player, Dick's player, anyone else who joins the game etc etc. The logistics of blowing Bruce's cover are huge compared to the logistics of bending his motivations just enough to let him believe regaining power over Crane is his solution. It wasn't the only one; Bruce could also have gone out on record and said it was a lie, but then it would have been public knowledge in game, and no amount of disputing it would alter that.
I will rewatch the movies again, as you suggest, and as a result of your crit take more care with my exposition, both to ensure it's exhaustive where needed and in place to highlight and support motives to specific things he says and does. It's been a significant change of pace for me, that I've delivered on very shakily, and I do believe that a refresher in voice would do me no small amount of good.
However, you do mention other concerns, so if you want me to expand on anything here or discuss those, please feel free to do so.
op here
Date: 2015-09-18 05:58 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)1) We’re of agreement in that Nolan’s Batman would not exist without the decades of mythos behind it. As an adaptation, that is the definition. My point referred more to the fact that Nolan’s (and Goyer’s) Batman is a different man from Morrison’s Batman or Miller’s or Snyder’s. The best example I can give is how many of the Batman writers portray Batman as the real face and Bruce as the mask; Nolan did the opposite. Bruce never stops being Bruce, as much as he would like to. This is especially obvious after Rachel’s death*.
Each creator brings something new to the character and visualizes him differently. Credit must be given too to the actor as Bale’s choices also informed Bruce’s and Batman’s development. Thus my point that while you can adopt certain things from another source like the Matches Malone identity just as an example, this would fall under head canon and it should be treated as such. It can and should supplement, but it should not be the characterization’s basis. When I read your threads, he sounds more like the Batman from preboot than the Batman from Nolanverse, which is what drove me to start there. But it’s good to hear you’re planning a rewatch!
*Related to this (and tucking it here so as not to interrupt my explanation) is another of your points which is that in Rises Bruce has given up on the hope of returning the city to its former glory. Actually, Gotham is doing fantastic at the beginning of Rises and has been for eight years. Based on his canon point of course your Bruce would not know this. But in Rises, Bruce was burying himself alive because the city no longer needed Batman, but he could not move on from Batman. This on top of his grief and guilt and anger relating to both Rachel’s and Harvey’s deaths which is all something else.
2) If I came across as doubting why he would protect Crane at all then that’s my mistake. Bruce gives people more chances than they probably deserve. My doubts ran closer to the way he is doing so in which he has basically appointed himself Crane’s defender. When he took the blame for Dent’s murders, he did so so knowing that if Dent was known to be a murderer all of the cases he had been working on would be dropped. All of those thieves, murderers, drug traffickers, money launderers, etc free to go. But more than that, Dent had come to represent hope for Gotham. So he took the fall to preserve that.
Which is where I hope you can understand why there is so much confusion in this case. He is taking on an ideological stance, yes, but the way he is going about it seems counterproductive. As you brought up, he is prone to dramatic examples. But these always have a reason whether it’s announcing himself, creating a reputation or old-fashioned intimidation. In this case, it tends to read like he is shooting himself in the foot for the sake of shooting himself in the foot (which I understand is not your intent! But to give you an indication of how it can come across.)
3) The ethics I spoke of are in reference to the psychiatrists. If confidentiality laws exist in game too, they have exceptions. So chances are any good, sane, ethical psychiatrist would have been calling the police like ten minutes after they walked in because that is the law. Something to keep in mind if you both choose to go that route.
Re: op here
Date: 2015-09-18 07:59 pm (UTC)From:Regarding *, I was actually referring to his fall in the middle of the film, after his fight with Bane, as his moment of losing hope and needing to rally. I also flashed back on him turtling in on himself as a way of dealing with his problems, but that was regarding a different point, and I didn't mean to blur them together. You are absolutely right that Gotham is doing better by then, but it doesn't effect Bruce's mindset presently, because despite suffering all the same losses, he has no idea about how that future will turn out.
Regarding 2. This is really more of a logistical point that has taken a rushed and thin IC justification as a point. I was trying somewhere to accept this as a flaw, but I don't know if it made it across. Situation: Bruce has Crane, wants to hand him over, but doesn't trust the police. The original conclusion was to be spread out over more time, allowing better development of the conflict of RISE, stoked by Crane, but that didn't happen - couldn't happen - since as pointed out in the other piece of crit Crane's egging on the network drew attention, made him an ever more frustrating target, and would get him if not caught by RISE then hunted by someone else. That means that every minute he was in Bruce's basement we were blocking legitimate, IC development from other people. So we put together a solution on the fly that we hadn't thought so far toward yet, and Bruce's motivations are prototypical as a result of that.
Honestly my greatest concern from the beginning of this plan was that him making a public post at all, sensationalising it like this, and if he did giving more than one word answers, just isn't Batman-like at all. To play him in a game I already have to adapt him to be more engaging and less independent. It is flawed, by miles, but it had to happen for the sake of progressing the plot more swiftly. In effect for me it's been backwards 'this is what needs to happen, now justify it', and it's been less effective than some of my other attempts to do so.
I'm attempting, through his continued communication, to scrape himself a save of face, and in some respects it's working where his original post may have faltered. I do ask that in this case you just bear with me, because being so deep into this plot as we are, going through is the only option and changing tack at this point, mid conversation, would be a thousand times worse. I have to have a certain faith and commitment to my characterisation to follow through.
In regard to your third point, that makes sense, and regarding it Lisa and I have agreed to drop it in its entirety. No psychiatrists. I'm not sure if that makes Bruce a better or worse person, but it's a suitable solution to the problem you pose.
This is a lot more meta than I write in a day so excuse me if I trip over or repeat myself at any point.