The Last Voyages: Application

[justice_is]

User Name/Nick: Ali-chan
User DW: antipositional
User Plurk: antipositional
E-mail: naruto13[at]gmail[dot]com
Other Characters: Steve Rogers

Character Name: Matt Murdock / Daredevil
Series: Netflix’s Daredevil
Age: No definite age is given, but I’d say mid-30s, based on flashbacks from the show and the actor’s age (35 as of 12/15/17). The wiki corroborates this.
From When?: End of Season 2

Inmate/Warden: Warden. This one is pretty simple: Matt believes in redemption. There’s a whole speech about it and everything.

Basically, this: Matt Murdock believes in the good in people, and he believes that even the worst offenders have some tiny little scrap of good in them somewhere, deep down. He believes that scrap deserves a chance. This is part of why he doesn’t kill - not only does he believe that it’s simply not his call to take a life, but he also genuinely believes that people deserve the chance to redeem themselves, even if it’s a slim one, and even if they maybe don’t want it. People who are dead can’t try for that redemption, and they leave behind voids that can’t be filled, to the detriment of those who might love them.

Furthermore, he does what he does as Daredevil not out of vengeance or for personal satisfaction, but because he loves his city and for the good of the people in it. He knows there’s a line between good and evil. He even knows that sometimes he toes that line, but ultimately he pulls back, whether through circumstances or force of will. He remains, at his core, a good person trying to do good in the world, and a person who believes in justice by law.

His dedication to doing good definitely doesn’t begin or end with putting a mask over his face - he also does what good he can without the mask, working for “the little guy” as a lawyer rather than supporting corporations or organizations only out for their own interests.

Item: His refreshable braille display

Abilities/Powers: Despite the fact that Matt is physically blind due to an accident that spilled a(n unknown toxic) chemical on his face when he was nine, his other senses are basically dialed up to 11 (or, possibly more reasonably, 100). For example, he can make out individual heartbeats in an average-sized courtroom and overhear conversations taking place within a several-city-block radius when he concentrates; he can also gauge injuries by the sound of a person’s bones (e.g., cracked vs. outright broken). Matt can tell what someone had for lunch a day ago and the last time they showered based on scent. He has the ability to make out individual ingredients in foods (down to the dirt on the hands of the person who served it to him) and feel the impressions left on paper by writing or printing processes. He’s pretty much a human lie detector, based largely on someone’s heart rate when they speak. He can read air currents, changes in pressure, temperature variations, and similar characteristics of the world inaccessible to others with normal senses. All of this culminates into what he essentially says is a 360-degree picture of the world coming at him from all directions, despite the fact that he doesn’t see it the way other people do.

This picture includes the ability to read negative space, allowing him to sometimes tell when something (a drawer, a room, a train car) is empty or full, and even get a vague idea of what might be inside it. He can hear the hum of electricity behind walls as well. (I do assume these two skills in particular will definitely be confused/become somewhat irrelevant on a larger scale, based on the Barge and its weird configuration.)

All of this allows him to fake being a sighted person (as Daredevil) pretty well when his eyes are covered. He’s able to run, jump, and otherwise maneuver just as a fully sighted person would. He can also catch projectiles thrown at him and throw things of his own with pinpoint accuracy. While it’s shown that his senses are pretty dialed up naturally on their own, it’s also intimated several times that he has to exert some level of concentration and control to get them to give him a clear picture, rather than just overwhelming noise, especially the farther and more focused he exerts them. I take this to mean that much of the time, when he’s going about his daily routine, he’s not focusing his senses so very acutely and is much more “blind” in the literal sense, even if his senses remain relatively heightened and easily focused back in with a thought.

As a further note, the series is unclear as to whether Matt’s heightened senses actually qualify as a “superpower,” and even whether they’re related to the chemical that took his sight. I’m treating them as a superhuman ability, even if they developed naturally - while it’s reasonable that his other senses would grow better with blindness, it’s not reasonable for them to increase to the level they’re at. During a conversation with Stick, he’s told that very few people develop abilities like his, so they seem to be a natural but extremely rare and possibly spontaneous (as in, unrelated to the chemical) occurrence. I’m currently planning for his senses to dull to more reasonable human levels if, say, he takes a shift in Zero or possibly during breaches.

Additionally, Matt is extremely physically fit and and excellent at hand-to-hand combat. He’s trained in fighting since he was about ten and also specializes in the use of two small sticks as weapons, including the ability to ricochet them off several surfaces to hit a moving target. He’s able to take an excessive amount of physical damage and keep going, and he heals quicker than the average human if he meditates.

Underneath it all, though, he is an otherwise baseline human with the same basic limitations and weaknesses. He can be knocked out and incapacitated, even if it seems to take an awful lot of damage to do it. His senses can be confused or blocked under the right circumstances, such as controlling, altering, or hiding a heartbeat. There are also some limitations that come with blindness that he can’t quite get around, even with four other super-senses: He can’t read electronic displays or flat text, and he still needs to touch things like fabric to really determine what they look like. He can also become overwhelmed by his senses, and they seem to “malfunction” unpredictably when he’s concussed, which can amount to either further heightened sensitivity or the temporary loss of a sense, such as hearing.

Personality: Matt Murdock is independent, kind-hearted, intelligent, and hard-working. He has never shied away from something because it’s difficult or even seemingly impossible, graduating summa cum laude from Columbia University despite the added challenges of studying blind. Matt’s father was a similarly hardworking and (essentially) honest, loving man; Matt looked up to him as a child and still strives to be someone his father would be proud of, even if it’s in a different way than his father might have wanted. Matt can also be witty, mischievous, and a bit of a ladies’ man; he’s not a goody two-shoes by any stretch of the imagination, though he does and will use the rules (and their loopholes) to his advantage in court.

But Matt’s true defining trait is the strict religious and personal ideals that he holds to, even when others try to force his hand. (Example: When given the choice to either shoot Frank Castle or “allow” him to shoot a known criminal, Matt refuses to take any shot at all and instead tries other options to keep any blood from being shed.) Those ideals include a strong belief in justice, but not vengeance - he believes a person should pay for what they’ve done, but he doesn’t believe that payment should include their life (he says that’s no one’s call to make but God’s). To this end, he defends people that others think should die for their actions (Grotto) and he immediately decides to represent Frank Castle, despite turning him in to the police as Daredevil, when he hears that Frank might face the death penalty. He doesn’t kill criminals as punishment for their crimes, but instead lets justice run its due course.

Because the thing about Matt is, he might dress up in a costume and roam the streets, but what he’s doing isn’t actually vigilante justice. He might knock the bad guys out or rough them up for information, but in the end, he lets justice come at the hands of the law. He leaves criminals for - or outright hands them over to - the police, and has even insisted the police take credit for his work at times to preserve the public's faith in the police and the justice system. He has an underlying respect for the law and the system that, together with his faith, keep him from taking justice truly into his own hands. He’s considered killing before, and even approached the extremely rare (literally only twice) situation with the intent to do it - but for several reasons, he’s never taken a life, and it’s not something he truly regrets when it doesn’t happen, either time. Instead, he’s proud of the fact that he doesn’t kill, and insistent in his belief that people deserve another chance, no matter how terrible or evil they are.

But he also won’t hesitate to let them suffer punishment to the full extent of the law for what they’ve done. As a lawyer, he’s thorough and fair; he doesn’t try to deny facts, only insist that his clients are tried according to the law. When defending a man on trial for killing another man, he doesn’t deny or try to pretend that his client isn’t guilty - he instead focuses on the question of whether he killed with intent or out of self-defense, thus determining the type of punishment he would face. Beliefs have no place in a court of law, he says, only facts - proving that while his own beliefs are strong, he is able to separate the two when necessary.

Matt can be unflinchingly violent in his actions, but those actions always have a purpose. As Daredevil, he uses violence and pain as threats on a regular basis, and shows no remorse or guilt over using these tools to get him what he needs to pursue and bring offenders to justice once he’s (figuratively) set his sights on them. But despite his clear capacity for violence, Matt’s nature is ultimately generous and selfless. His blindness, in fact, is the direct result of pushing an older man out of the way of an oncoming truck, saving his life, when Matt was nine. This shows that Matt was already a selfless person unafraid to act for the benefit of others at that young age, and these qualities have only grown with him. He becomes Daredevil to protect people and preserve the city he loves, to turn it into a better place and to ensure that those who might otherwise escape justice are brought to face it, head-on. In the very first episode of the show, he offers up his home to a client in need without hesitation.

Matt’s faith is a big piece of who he is. A devout Catholic, his faith is highlighted frequently, and he often speaks with his priest about questions or struggles he’s facing. He says, sometimes, that he thinks he might even have a little of the devil in him; while at first this clearly worries him, he also seems to understand and accept his own capacity for violence and doesn’t shy away from or reject it. While it’s clear that part of him regrets becoming the fighter his father never wanted him to be, it’s also clear that he’s not going to stop or change what he has become. He accepts that he’s standing close to the line between good and evil, but he also works hard to make sure he doesn’t cross it. Even when faced with the man ultimately responsible for his father’s death, Matt lashes out and hurts him, but he doesn’t kill him, even when prompted and literally handed the chance. Again, despite being pressured, he holds to his own ideals, and refuses to end a life out of revenge or anger.

Whether because of his religious beliefs or because of his nature, Matt also carries a significant amount of guilt. He feels responsible for his father’s death, however indirectly, and he feels responsible when people die on his watch, despite knowing he did everything he could to help them. This may be part of why he continues to act as Daredevil - he's not the type of person to walk away from a situation he can influence, even when he knows he should.

One important note is that Matt holds others up to the same ideals to which he holds himself. Because of this, he sometimes has a hard time connecting or maintaining relationships with those that don’t really share them. It’s also part of the reason that his romantic relationships with both Elektra and Karen are so rocky. Despite this, Elektra in particular seems able to bring out the reckless, irresponsible side of him, even when he actively knows she’s doing it. (Elektra is also a complicated subject, period, but it’s clear Matt loves her even when he knows it’s not the best thing for him, and he doesn’t really seem to care. If he has an Achilles heel, it’s Elektra, although even then, it’s only to a point. He still refuses to kill for her, and does his best to keep her from killing, too. He loves her, and he wants her to be better than who she is - he wants her to be someone whose ideals align with his own, even when it’s clear they never will.)

Matt has also shown that he’s not afraid to get emotional (he cries in front of Foggy after Foggy finds out he’s Daredevil), and while he sometimes pushes people away, intentionally and unintentionally, he clearly regrets it and ultimately doesn’t want to end up alone, even as he tries to protect those he cares about. While he tried for a time in season 1 to push people away, he’s also accepted that he needs their support, and he doesn’t want to go it alone. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t mess things up (throughout most of season 2, thanks to Elektra), but despite the fact that he’s fallible and certainly not always a team player, Matt does understand the value of friendship and teamwork.

As a final note, regardless of whether he’s behind a mask or not, Matt also has no qualms about using his abilities to gather as much information about the world around him as possible, and this includes listening to heartbeats and eavesdropping on conversations (which, Foggy points out, is pretty invasive). His abilities are simply how he “sees,” and while he often underplays them to seem the “normal” blind man, he never acts remorseful for using them to draw a clearer picture of the people and places around him. (I will be asking for permission OOCly regarding some of this, however, because I know it is so invasive.)

Barge Reactions: Matt lives in a world where aliens have come down through a hole in the sky and a Hulk has rampaged through New York. He’s also intelligent and doesn’t seem overly concerned or bothered by his own strange circumstances re: super-senses. I think he’ll adjust to life on the Barge fairly well, and have little problem accepting other species, races, or canons. However, he is the type of person who projects his own values onto others, holding them to similar standards, which may or may not make things difficult when he comes up against someone from a completely different world or culture with very different laws and ways of life. (Honestly, it can be a problem when he comes up against people who hold different values in his own world.) He won’t steamroll right over people with different values and assume they’re wrong or stupid, but he won’t shy away from discussing those values in an open and intelligent (and probably somewhat passionate) fashion, either. Most importantly, he won’t shy away from doing everything he can to prevent deaths on the Barge, nor will he shy away from calling for a response to deaths or other violations when they do happen. He might struggle with the fact that there are no laws necessarily on the Barge, but he will have faith in what system there is and in the underlying purpose of redemption, and hold fast to it.

Matt won’t enjoy things like floods or breaches that change who he is or how he thinks. He holds his values and beliefs very dear - they make him who he is - and I think he’ll have the most problem with events that might turn him into someone less principled. Because he’s also trying to keep a secret (see below), he’ll be concerned about events or characters that might bring that into question (e.g., mind-reading, truth floods), but he will deal with those as they arise - not by threats if it can at all be avoided, but ideally with trust and understanding. (Threats aren’t necessarily out of the question, though, depending.) On the other hand, Matt is the type of person who might have a little fun with some of the lighter events, and he might even appreciate the ability of some situations to give everyone on board a much-needed break. He is not all work and no play, and the right character types can definitely bring that out in him even more.

There is one important point about Matt that’s going to make things interesting for him on the Barge: His identity as Daredevil is a secret (where he’s from), and he’s going to want to keep it that way. At the same time, he has abilities and training (and principles) that won’t let him simply stand aside when there’s danger or a wrong that needs righting.

Given that the Barge is a closed system and the Daredevil getup is pretty noticeable, Matt’s likely going to be keeping that in reserve at first. He’ll still want to protect his identity, so anything that might jeopardize that is not going to be something he wants to do unless it’s unavoidable. He will act as much like the legitimately, completely blind man he appears to be as possible, though hints of his “talents” will likely bleed through, especially over time and to people who get to know him well. For example, for most of their relationship Matt never acted anything but completely normal and blind around Foggy; he did, however, let himself show his true abilities around Elektra. The type of relationship and the level of trust will impact his choices on this point significantly, but he will likely err on the side of caution in general, on the Barge. He probably won’t be able to resist showing off a little, but it will be in subtle ways that are less likely to out him - he might let on that he can hear or smell better than the average person, but he might not let on just how much.

However, given the Barge, things will undoubtedly happen that are going to call for - in Matt’s opinion - some kind of physical response, including inmate activities, floods, and other Barge-wide events and threats. When that happens, he won’t hesitate. He’s most likely to pull out the black gear from season 1 if he needs to hide his identity at first. He likely won’t patrol (at least, openly) in it or do anything to actually draw attention to himself, but if something needs to be handled and he feels he’s the one to do it, he will have no problem with dressing in black, covering his face, and handling it from the shadows, as quietly and quickly as possible, before slipping back into his known identity. To protect his identity, Matt will very likely make use of options such as killing the lights, following from a distance, and hitting from behind to ensure anyone he’s attacking sees, hears, and feels as little of him as possible. If the Devil’s identity comes out, so be it, but he will work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen for as long as he can.

Deal: Matt’s deal is for the revival of the family Frank Castle lost; though depending on his interactions with Frank or others on the Barge, this may change. I have okayed this with Frank’s player.

History: Wiki entry

Sample Journal Entry:

[Matt’s first entry is via video; what the Barge gets is a relatively well-manicured young man in his mid-thirties wearing a collared shirt, tie, and dark glasses. For all intents and purposes, his head is tilted toward the screen, looking at it as you’d expect - but if you look closely, it’s not quite tilted at the right angle; the glasses give a good impression that he’s watching the display, but it’s maybe not perfect, for the observant.

He licks his lips, and begins.]

Hi. I’m, uh, I’m a new warden. Matt Murdock. [He smiles.] I’m also a lawyer, for better or for worse.

[He kind of lets that sink in, maybe just a touch awkwardly, for a second or two.]

I’m from Hell’s Kitchen - New York, which is on Earth, if that’s the kind of clarification you need.

[Then he leans forward slightly, a bit more seriously now:] I don’t know exactly how things work on board yet, but I promise I’m a fast learner. I will tell you that I believe in why you’re here, even if you don’t. [He doesn’t remember a lot from his conversation with the Admiral, but he remembers that - the offer, and the payment. He barely sees it as payment. It’s more of an opportunity to do what he’s been doing back home, just maybe in a different way. Daredevil gets the active threats off the street. Matt Murdock sees they get what they deserve, in the eyes of the law. And now, here… he has a chance to get into the guts of what he believes should happen, after that.

Besides... maybe it was a good time to get away for a while, anyway.]

[He pauses, and then there’s a slight shift, as he slides his foot sideways against something off-camera. The top of a cane falls gently against his shoulder, which he grabs absently as he adds, cheerfully,] Oh. And I don’t text as fast as some of the kids these days. If you really need me in a hurry, I’d suggest you just call.

[Then, with a charming smile,] I don’t suppose anyone would like to show me around?

Sample RP:

Matt’s first flood is not what he expected. Then again, based on what he’s heard, maybe he should have expected that. What happens is, there are things crawling throughout the Barge, and although he can’t exactly see them to compare, they remind him uncannily of the gremlins from that movie he saw as a kid. They’re all over, and they’re annoying, and they’re malicious, but not exactly deadly -

Well. Not if you can defend yourself.

The fact that they seem to have gotten into whatever power system the Barge uses (it’s not electrical, he knows what regular power lines, cables, and conduits sound like, and it gives a good impression of electricity, but it’s not perfect) isn’t really a problem for him - the hallways plunged into periodic darkness, the headache-inducing flickering of the lights don’t bother him. It’s the creatures essentially snapping at his elbows and heels if he stays still, chittering and climbing around like monkeys, that have his skin crawling and his nerves on edge.

There’s a cluster of them up ahead - he hears them long before he would be close enough to see them if he could - and they’re breaking into the gym. The doors have been closed and barred by the staff for the duration of the flood, but their little clawed fingers are finding the cracks in the doors, pulling at the hinges, and it seems like a really, really bad idea to give these guys access to things like weights and bars and benches - which is why the room was sealed in the first place, but it’s not going to hold. He can hear the doors giving; if he puts his hand on the wall, he can feel the doors and their frame buckling, too, in the vibrations beneath his fingertips.

“Hey!” he calls, speeding up as he approaches; there’s no one in the hallway, half the lights are out, the other half flickering almost like strobes, so he’s probably good even if someone approaches, and he’ll hear them in enough time to change up his game if he has to. He pulls his cane in, folds it up, holds it like one of his clubs as he approaches, sensing all the little heartbeats and breathing mouths turning toward him, hearing the reptile-like eyelids slither over bulbous eyes as they blink. “I really don’t think you guys should be in there. Why don’t you find something else to do.”

And he launches himself at them; the hallway lights up around him in his head as his senses map out the walls, the floor, the dozen or so little creatures trying to come at him from all angles. But the thing is, you can’t sneak up on someone who can “see” everywhere at once, and his hands, his feet, his folded cane strike at small, scaly heads and smash flat noses, swipe clawed feet out from underneath squat bodies until a pile of the little things has amassed at his feet, and the last two are scampering away, yelling what must be insults in whatever language they use back at him. Matt sighs, reaches up with the back of one hand to swipe at the deep scratch one of them made with its claws on his cheek, and pulls out his communicator to ask whether someone might like to come down and help him throw these things in an empty cabin for safe keeping.

He isn’t sure what happened - maybe they had a fight among themselves, he lies smoothly, earnestly over the feed. One of them must’ve won - the one that scratched him as he turned the corner - but now he’s stumbled onto a pile of them, and would anybody like to give him a hand?

Special Notes: ICly: Despite his “powers,” Matt is physically blind. His abilities let him make out raised or depressed letters and symbols, but he won’t be able to read anything printed or displayed on a flat surface such as a traditional book page, computer screen, tablet, or communicator. I’d like his refreshable braille display to plug into or otherwise be compatible with his communicator so he’ll be able to use the texting function (mostly to read and respond to posts that have been posted in text format). Given that the display is meant to work with a computer, I’m assuming that’s not unreasonable; if you have other ways you’d like him to work around the texting via communicator thing, though, such as voice control or dictation, I am open to it!

OOCly: I understand that I’m apping a character from a somewhat overlapping canon as my current character. Based on precedent, while MCU movie events are felt in the TV series, the series never seem to affect what’s going on in the movies - thus, keeping the two of them separate shouldn’t be an issue even if they are technically from the same universe. More than that, I wanted to note that even though Matt should know who Captain America is, he has no real reason to seek him out on board the Barge. Conversely, because Matt’s identity is a secret, Steve would have no idea he’s Daredevil (assuming he’s even seen any news coverage of Daredevil in the first place, which could be argued either way, as per my point about movie/TV crossover above). I feel it’s completely reasonable to play both of them without any interaction at all between the two. If you do have any concerns, please let me know and I’m happy to discuss them.

I have also run the fact that I’m apping past Frank Castle’s player and gotten their okay on both bringing Matt in and his deal (since it concerns Frank), but I know you’ll likely confirm that yourselves, too.

Thanks, guys!