Application for outer_divide

[nodavinci]

[- OOC Information -]

Name: PG
Do you play any other characters in Outer Divide? Liara T'Soni (relicrebellion)

[- Character Information -]

Character Name: Tony Stark
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
AU or OU: OU
Canon Point: Post-Avengers
Journal: nodavinci
Icon: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/4578308/1615317

Appearance: Tony is of average height and build, trim and athletic in a manner frequenly hidden by his tailored suits. He is dark of hair and eye, the former kept clipped, and nearly always sports a neatly trimmed goatee. ('Nearly' here accounts for the fact that it isn't unknown for him to go days on an inventing jag without bothering to attend to more than the bare minimum necessary grooming requirements.) His most memorable feature would either be his grin, or the small, glowing arc reactor set in the center of his chest, depending on who you're asking and whether or not they've seen him with his shirt off.

History: Here.

Previous Game History: N/A

Personality: On the surface, Tony Stark is exactly what he calls himself: a "billionaire, genius, philanthropist playboy", with the emphasis on the latter (or, if one happens to encounter him in a professional setting, on the second). He is by turns charming and infuriating, with the sort of blase attitude towards life that gives the impression that he takes nothing seriously - even those things that, if one examines his actions stripped of his attitude, he clearly takes very seriously indeed. He is outrageous and unpredictable, the sort of person people will watch just to see what he does next, because it's bound to be fun, or at the very least exciting. He has a cutting wit and a fine grasp of wordplay, and can readily infuriate anyone he wants to infuriate - and charm those he wants to charm by using that same wit to challenge and imply a shared joke, entry to some inner circle. It's a good mask, but it isn't a flawless one - although he wears it well enough to frustrate all but the most tenacious looking for something beyond the superficial.

Where Tony's social skill doesn't hold up is when it comes to building and maintaining strong and lasting relationships. The same flamboyant, flippant charm that draws in people met at parties and social gatherings is at best exhausting and at worst infuriating to anyone attempting to maintain a long-term connection. He has a hard time letting go of the mask and being genuine - and a harder time knowing when it's time to do so until it's almost too late. It's a rare person who can put up with his attitude and his arrogance - let alone with his tendency to hyperfocus, occasionally self-destructive behaviour, and difficulty remembering things like birthdays, allergies, and names. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he's a loyal friend once someone has gained his friendship, and he's slowly - slowly - getting better at expressing that friendship directly rather than merely assuming it's obvious. Even so, he's still likely to bury a thoughtful gesture beneath a small mountain of blase attitude and offhand sarcasm.

Tony has an incredible ego. He's well aware of his strengths - chiefly, but not solely, his intelligence - and he wants to be sure everyone else is aware of them, too. He's not above showing off a little to make sure this is the case, and is all the more willing to do so when he feels he has competition. Not, of course, that he will generally admit to feeling like he has competition - he is, after all, Tony Stark, and is thus unparallelled. This feeds into his difficulty with teamwork - on some level, it means admitting he isn't enough on his own, and that chafes. Which doesn't mean that he can't do it, just that it takes a pretty big push.

Hand-in-hand with his ego goes Tony's tendency towards recklessness. It isn't that he doesn't plan ahead (although he sometimes doesn't), it's that his sense of his own brilliance makes him more certain than he often should be of his own success. He came up with the idea, so surely it will work - which has landed him in a difficult spot more than once when he's failed to take into account variables like, say, the likelihood of his shiny new flying armour icing up at significant altitude. And while he'll learn from each individual mistake and correct for it in the future, he will never quite learn to slow down and look for holes in his own brilliant ideas. (Other people's brilliant ideas are another matter entirely.) He doesn't deal well with failure or, even worse, helplessness, and prolonged periods of either will typically lead to depression, self-pity, and reckless indulgence meant to smother both. (For example: his retreat into self-destructive hedonism when he was certain he was going to die of palladium poisoning.)

Tony is the sort of person who has a very hard time just shutting off. His mind is always working, owing to a terrifying synergy of intellect and more energy than any single human being should ever have. He can juggle multiple trains of thought, which makes him difficult to keep up with - especially since he rarely can be bothered to slow down enough to let anyone else catch up. He has a hard time sitting still, and an equally hard time making himself pay attention to anything he doesn't find interesting - he abhors boredom, especially with as many interesting things as there are out there to investigate, and is entirely too likely to write something off if he's sure it will bore him. Conversely, when he is interested in something, especially if he thinks it important, he has a habit of hyperfocusing, often to the exclusion of everything else.

Despite his failings, Tony is at heart a good man. He wants to do good for the world, and where once he was content to host or donate to charities, he has since taken on a more active role. He knows what he thinks the world should be, and he has both the ego and the determination necessary to try to force it in that direction - which provides a focus for his drive and energy. In the years following his captivity, he has utterly changed the direction of his company from weapons research to renewable energy, and has worked actively as Iron Man to prevent others from suffering at the hands of the corrupt structure he'd been a part of. This is in part out of idealism (if an idealism more than a little coloured by cynicism), and in part out of guilt.

And make no mistake, shameless though he may be, Tony is more than capable of feeling guilt. In fact, given his arrogance, he has a habit of shouldering more guilt than he reasonably should - an over-inflated sense of his own responsibility goes along with his over-inflated sense of his own importance. (Which is, at least, better than having no sense of responsibility at all.) He feels the need to atone for the harm he once unwittingly caused, and even more strongly, he feels the need to improve the world enough to justify the fact that a good man who he considered a friend once gave his life to save him. This serves to compound his ego-induced recklessness - not only might he believe he's the best, or only, person for a particular task, he believes he owes it to the world to perform that task, even at great personal cost.

Powers/Abilities: Tony has no superhuman abilities whatsoever, relying instead on intelligence and skill. He has a brilliant mind, and is an expert in the fields of engineering, physics, and computer programming - he can make most any technology he can get his hands on sit up and dance (which is usually, but not always, a metaphor). He can build robots and futuristic powered armour, program AIs, and hack high-security systems owned by major intelligence agencies using a smart phone. While he truly shines when he has access to a high-tech laboratory, he has the resourcefulness to work with what he has at hand - he was able to build his first set of armour in a jury-rigged workshop in a cave complex, after building a miniature arc reactor to keep his heart running. (He does, however, require something to work with - he might make something spectacular out of a box of scraps, but given nothing more than a pair of coconuts, the best he could probably manage would be a pina colada.)

His expertise comes with some drawbacks, however - most of Tony's defensive and offensive capabilities are bound up in his armour. He has some skill at hand-to-hand combat, but he's not an expert, and while he'd be able to hold his own against an untrained thug, any trained fighter could put him in the dirt with a minimum of effort.

There is also the tiny matter of the shrapnel creeping towards his heart - the arc reactor in his chest is the only thing keeping him alive, and were it to be removed or damaged beyond repair, he would not be long for the world. This is possibly an even creater weakness than his arrogance.

Possessions: Iron Man Mark VII armour & controlling wristbands (General armour specs here, Mark VII specifics here), smart phone, wallet with attendant ID and (thoroughly useless now) credit cards, pocket electronics repair kit. And, of course, the mini arc reactor keeping him alive.

Arrival: Ship, please!

Reason for Playing: I genuinely enjoy the character of Tony Stark, and would like to explore how he would react and adapt to the game's setting, especially given his previous experiences with captivity, hostile regimes, and improvisational technology, and his difficulty playing well with others. The conflict created by his attitude, contrasted with the fact that his skill with technology gives him something to offer, is something I think will make for very interesting CR.

[- Original Character Supplement-]

World History: Tell us about the world your character comes from.

Character History: How does that character fit into that world? How do they interact in it?

[- Writing Samples -]

First person:
[The video opens with a strangely-angled shot of the side of a row of stasis pods, and jumps steadily, as though the person holding the communicator is tapping it rhythmically against something. It's almost enough to suggest the feed's been triggered accidentally - until Tony speaks, tone offhand in a manner that almost certainly has to be deliberate.]

You know, the whole 1984 routine was outdated in 1984. I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be post-stormtrooper in our conception of futuristic government - is privatized corruption still the next big thing? I haven't actually been keeping up.

And speaking of cliches, a crashed spaceship? Really? We're going with that? Wasn't this the setting for a few really bad choose your own adventure books back in the 1970s?

But if cliches are your thing...

[He finally tips the communicator up to get a shot of his face, shit-eating grin wide beneath angry eyes.]

Take me to your leader.

Third person:
"...calling for an investigation into the so-called heroes..."

Tony glanced up from the pale blue glow of his workstation, eyes narrowing in annoyance at the monitor across the floor, broadcasting the evening news. It was nothing he hadn't heard before - the same debate had been raging for nearly two weeks now. Who was responsible for the Chitauri invasion? Who was responsible for taking care of the aftermath? So far, the lines seemed clearly drawn, those who applauded the Avengers for their part in the battle squared off against those who saw collateral damage as little different from wanton destruction. The numbers were squarely on the side of the former camp, but the power...

"JARVIS, kill power to monitor three."

The sound cut the reporter off mid-sentence, and Tony smiled in unseen satisfaction at the blank screen before his gaze trailed back down to the schematics in front of him.

"Tilt ninety degrees, and rotate a quarter turn clockwise."

The repairs to his armour had been simple enough, but space - space was proving the problem. In particular, deep space and the effects of a complete vacuum on technology meant to operate within a planet's atmosphere. Pepper had departed with an exasperated sigh after the third time he'd insisted this was an oversight that had to be rectified - and it was. Extra-planetary threats were no longer merely theoretical, and he'd be damned if he wasn't ready the next time.