character rambles, in progress
Found an interesting article about my boy, though… Part of the interest is in that I very seldom see people writing about him. Anyhoo, some things caught my eye and while I already sort of rambled in a Plurk about this, I figured it was worth expanding on ideas without the restriction of a 140 character limit.
First off, I imagine the Scarecrow to my Crane being more of an… Imaginary friend, if you will, rather than a split personality. After the events in the Asylum basement in Batman Begins it’s entirely possible that Nolanverse Crane, possibly with some sort of MPD or schizophrenia could have finally cracked and that’s where the Scarecrow was born (foreshadowed somewhat by his whole “Jungian archetypes” explanation to Rachel previous to that) but: I incorporate the history described in Year One into the way I play my Crow, so I have to take that into consideration.
Year One’s Jonathan Crane seems remarkably well adjusted for a character that a lot of people like to tag personality disorders on. You truly sympathise with this kid’s backstory once it’s put in perspective because “weird professor gets kicked out for firing a gun in class” isn’t really something you can feel too strongly about. Instead of being a kid who liked to scare birds, he was a kid whose crazy grandmother shoved him in an abandoned church from time to time and got attacked by birds. The older kids bullied him (seriously, I’ve never heard of anyone ever being beat up for their lunch money but it obviously happens in comics) not only for being a scrawny, leggy thing, but for daring to like books. One thing worth mentioning in playing a Nolanverse Crane is that I’d always had trouble imagining a young Cillian Murphy being bullied or rejected for his looks -- I’ve imagined that he was just a late bloomer/ugly duckling or he was bullied for being a little girl-boy in a rural, obviously conservative Southern setting.
In any case, I don’t think that Crane suffers from MPD (not just because I think it’s a tough term to throw around) but because… Although he did undoubtedly suffer a great childhood trauma, it did culminate in the murder of his grandmother. While MPD would normally be a coping mechanism to deal with these traumas, he responded by getting rid of the threat (also he doesn’t dissociate himself from future traumas, he faces them head on… Just with an ugly sack on his head.) These are just a few reasons that I think that MPD is too hasty and “trendy” a diagnosis to slap on him, though I do stress that this applies to Year One. It’s a little more plausible in other origin stories, and the results are played out very interestingly in comics where this is the case (The Batman Adventures Vol. 1 #004 and #005, “Panic in the Streets” is particularly interesting, if a bit cheesy with the Animated Series look he has going on).
As far as the Crane that specifically I roleplay is concerned, the Scarecrow is part ironic usage of a past tormentor, part symbol of what he can be. If that make sense. It was a nickname that he probably hated as a child, one associated with those bullies that helped make his life a living hell. Using it to frighten others is a way to get power over it -- analogous to how Batman uses what once frightened him to his advantage -- and I do think that Crane is obsessed with power. Fear, yes, but fear is just a means for power. And the Scarecrow, as far as a "personality" is concerned is an ideal proponent of that power -- simply having the mask on makes Crane more confident, sarcastic, his choice of words changes. Part of that is just the mask in general (take two steps on the internet to see examples of what anonymity can do to someone's personality) but the other part is... As meta as this may sound, roleplay? I could wax philosophical on what masks mean to people for a few more paragraphs, but long story short: the Scarecrow to my Crane is a persona, rather than a personality.
I just took three large-ass paragraphs to describe something that probably didn't even need justification. NOW I CAN START TALKING ABOUT THE ARTICLE, HA HA!
So let me get to that. First, one quote from near the end of the page caught my eye.
“I think you’ve given him perfectly reasonable motivation without any sort of hint of an ultimate goal. But that’s not a bad thing either. If he is slightly unhinged, then his psyche may not be able to rectify a final outcome…he may just be experimenting for the sake of experimenting without ever reaching his hypothesis because he’s so wrapped up in the minutiae of the moment. I think the fact that this approach makes him so random and creepy is perfect for his persona.”
With this plot I have going on -- the first wide-scale plot I’ve attempted with any character much less Crow -- this is one thing I’ve been worrying about a lot. I'd started out sort of thinking that this would be a purely scientific venture -- to see if the toxin produced by his Weapon form is anything like what he created on his own back in his world -- but after I got like fifteen volunteers for the plot, I realised that there had to be something more to it than that. One case of OOC dictating IC, I suppose.
Taking a look at some Soul Campaign history, my original characterisation of him was under the assumption that he'd been in Arkham for a while, post-The Dark Knight, probably on a healthy cycle of drug cocktails. Basically, a far cry from the totally stoned weirdo Crow that you see at the beginning of that movie, and certainly far from the guy muttering "Scarecrow" and smiling oddly in Batman Begins. OOCly, I've always enjoyed playing the nice character that reveals himself to be a gigantic creep, and working with the idea that he's been slowly recovering from his freak-out before his arrival in Death City was the only way that I thought that could be plausible. So you did see some hints of him being a giant dumbass -- firmly believing that this was all some stupid, drug-induced dream ("this is a weird one") and heading out into the sandstorm being one of those hints -- and I tried to take advantage of a life-endangering event to shock him into rationality. After that, he could get to work.
Thus, he got to trolling. I spent five months of OOC time trying to get Death City to believe that he was a well-intentioned, if someone snobbish man... With some success! Allen, and Yuuri were kind of the most gullible ones (and I mean that with the utmost love for them) but apart from Sephiroth, I don't think that there was anyone out there who hated him. Robin and Blue Beetle are left out of the equation because a) my poor Nolanverse boy has no idea who they are and b) I didn't get to plotting with one of them until quite recently. Anyway, these were the months that I worried about his characterisation the most because... I was reluctant to drop too many Creeper Alarms for the sake of hoarding all this positive CR and for the sake of Crane being a serviceable actor. I was super paranoid that people would take it the wrong way and playing him not enough of a creep. I was getting there, augh! This was one of the causes of my hiatus to get character mojo back, right around the middle of the Shadow event, if anyone remembers.
I ended up using this Shadow event as a catalyst to get him out of Polite Troll mode into Full Creep mode. He had been relatively stable since the sandstorm event, and so this little bit of psychological trauma (getting to meet Little Him, a reminder of all his fears and insecurities) gave him a foot up into instability. I let his voice start to slip in subsequent posts, not quite the polite, well-spoken doctor that people had seen before. Some characters did choose to pick up on that. He even began being openly malicious to some people -- suggesting the "throw yourself down the stairs" Weapon transformation trick to Aladdin, for example. Before all this he'd even had his share of bullies at his age -- see Sephiroth -- and he began to formulate plans...
[Writing more later when I'm not tired.]
First off, I imagine the Scarecrow to my Crane being more of an… Imaginary friend, if you will, rather than a split personality. After the events in the Asylum basement in Batman Begins it’s entirely possible that Nolanverse Crane, possibly with some sort of MPD or schizophrenia could have finally cracked and that’s where the Scarecrow was born (foreshadowed somewhat by his whole “Jungian archetypes” explanation to Rachel previous to that) but: I incorporate the history described in Year One into the way I play my Crow, so I have to take that into consideration.
Year One’s Jonathan Crane seems remarkably well adjusted for a character that a lot of people like to tag personality disorders on. You truly sympathise with this kid’s backstory once it’s put in perspective because “weird professor gets kicked out for firing a gun in class” isn’t really something you can feel too strongly about. Instead of being a kid who liked to scare birds, he was a kid whose crazy grandmother shoved him in an abandoned church from time to time and got attacked by birds. The older kids bullied him (seriously, I’ve never heard of anyone ever being beat up for their lunch money but it obviously happens in comics) not only for being a scrawny, leggy thing, but for daring to like books. One thing worth mentioning in playing a Nolanverse Crane is that I’d always had trouble imagining a young Cillian Murphy being bullied or rejected for his looks -- I’ve imagined that he was just a late bloomer/ugly duckling or he was bullied for being a little girl-boy in a rural, obviously conservative Southern setting.
In any case, I don’t think that Crane suffers from MPD (not just because I think it’s a tough term to throw around) but because… Although he did undoubtedly suffer a great childhood trauma, it did culminate in the murder of his grandmother. While MPD would normally be a coping mechanism to deal with these traumas, he responded by getting rid of the threat (also he doesn’t dissociate himself from future traumas, he faces them head on… Just with an ugly sack on his head.) These are just a few reasons that I think that MPD is too hasty and “trendy” a diagnosis to slap on him, though I do stress that this applies to Year One. It’s a little more plausible in other origin stories, and the results are played out very interestingly in comics where this is the case (The Batman Adventures Vol. 1 #004 and #005, “Panic in the Streets” is particularly interesting, if a bit cheesy with the Animated Series look he has going on).
As far as the Crane that specifically I roleplay is concerned, the Scarecrow is part ironic usage of a past tormentor, part symbol of what he can be. If that make sense. It was a nickname that he probably hated as a child, one associated with those bullies that helped make his life a living hell. Using it to frighten others is a way to get power over it -- analogous to how Batman uses what once frightened him to his advantage -- and I do think that Crane is obsessed with power. Fear, yes, but fear is just a means for power. And the Scarecrow, as far as a "personality" is concerned is an ideal proponent of that power -- simply having the mask on makes Crane more confident, sarcastic, his choice of words changes. Part of that is just the mask in general (take two steps on the internet to see examples of what anonymity can do to someone's personality) but the other part is... As meta as this may sound, roleplay? I could wax philosophical on what masks mean to people for a few more paragraphs, but long story short: the Scarecrow to my Crane is a persona, rather than a personality.
I just took three large-ass paragraphs to describe something that probably didn't even need justification. NOW I CAN START TALKING ABOUT THE ARTICLE, HA HA!
So let me get to that. First, one quote from near the end of the page caught my eye.
“I think you’ve given him perfectly reasonable motivation without any sort of hint of an ultimate goal. But that’s not a bad thing either. If he is slightly unhinged, then his psyche may not be able to rectify a final outcome…he may just be experimenting for the sake of experimenting without ever reaching his hypothesis because he’s so wrapped up in the minutiae of the moment. I think the fact that this approach makes him so random and creepy is perfect for his persona.”
With this plot I have going on -- the first wide-scale plot I’ve attempted with any character much less Crow -- this is one thing I’ve been worrying about a lot. I'd started out sort of thinking that this would be a purely scientific venture -- to see if the toxin produced by his Weapon form is anything like what he created on his own back in his world -- but after I got like fifteen volunteers for the plot, I realised that there had to be something more to it than that. One case of OOC dictating IC, I suppose.
Taking a look at some Soul Campaign history, my original characterisation of him was under the assumption that he'd been in Arkham for a while, post-The Dark Knight, probably on a healthy cycle of drug cocktails. Basically, a far cry from the totally stoned weirdo Crow that you see at the beginning of that movie, and certainly far from the guy muttering "Scarecrow" and smiling oddly in Batman Begins. OOCly, I've always enjoyed playing the nice character that reveals himself to be a gigantic creep, and working with the idea that he's been slowly recovering from his freak-out before his arrival in Death City was the only way that I thought that could be plausible. So you did see some hints of him being a giant dumbass -- firmly believing that this was all some stupid, drug-induced dream ("this is a weird one") and heading out into the sandstorm being one of those hints -- and I tried to take advantage of a life-endangering event to shock him into rationality. After that, he could get to work.
Thus, he got to trolling. I spent five months of OOC time trying to get Death City to believe that he was a well-intentioned, if someone snobbish man... With some success! Allen, and Yuuri were kind of the most gullible ones (and I mean that with the utmost love for them) but apart from Sephiroth, I don't think that there was anyone out there who hated him. Robin and Blue Beetle are left out of the equation because a) my poor Nolanverse boy has no idea who they are and b) I didn't get to plotting with one of them until quite recently. Anyway, these were the months that I worried about his characterisation the most because... I was reluctant to drop too many Creeper Alarms for the sake of hoarding all this positive CR and for the sake of Crane being a serviceable actor. I was super paranoid that people would take it the wrong way and playing him not enough of a creep. I was getting there, augh! This was one of the causes of my hiatus to get character mojo back, right around the middle of the Shadow event, if anyone remembers.
I ended up using this Shadow event as a catalyst to get him out of Polite Troll mode into Full Creep mode. He had been relatively stable since the sandstorm event, and so this little bit of psychological trauma (getting to meet Little Him, a reminder of all his fears and insecurities) gave him a foot up into instability. I let his voice start to slip in subsequent posts, not quite the polite, well-spoken doctor that people had seen before. Some characters did choose to pick up on that. He even began being openly malicious to some people -- suggesting the "throw yourself down the stairs" Weapon transformation trick to Aladdin, for example. Before all this he'd even had his share of bullies at his age -- see Sephiroth -- and he began to formulate plans...
[Writing more later when I'm not tired.]