Application (Balance)

[getinthedanny]

	Casey Brinke: Write the fiction you want to be.
	APP HMD PATH PLAYER NAME

Player Name: Marion
Age: 21+
Contact: canarycry + DW pm
Timezone: EST
Other character currently in game: None

Character name: Casey Brinke
Age: Mid 20s.
Canon: DC Comics (Young Animal Doom Patrol)
Canon point: Doom Patrol Issue 9
History: Wiki link
So the above link only really gives summary of the first major story arc, issue 1-6. Below is a summary of issues 7-9 which aren’t covered.

WARNING: This content is $#!+

This story arc takes place right after the end of the first. Casey is now a member of the Doom Patrol, but her cat Lotion went missing during her adventures! While posting up missing cat flyers around the neighborhood, Robotman (Cliff) and Negative Man (Larry) come up and introduce her to the old leader of the team, Dr. Niles Caulder, who proposed coming back to the team despite everyone having reservations because he’s a little crazy! He does however help Casey get her right leg back after it was amputated in the first arc, so he’s ok in her book for now. The first mission he gives the team is to take down the Scants - alien beings who implant bad ideas into people’s heads that they’re convinced are good ones, to collect a substance called Idyat from their ears. Fun!

No, not fun! The adventure is out of control and insane, Niles convinces Casey to eat a protein bar that turns her temporarily into a psychic werewolf, and she eats an alien jellyfish. And when it’s all over it turns out he only needed the Doom Patrol so he could grab the leftovers of the alien to settle a debt with some shady collectors. The icing on the cake is that her new organic leg bursts apart and at this point Casey has had enough of the psycho doctor. She gets her old robot leg on and the team collectively tells Niles to screw off.

On the plus side, she finds her cat Lotion! On the plus plus side, Lotion is now mysteriously a talking man-cat who dresses in leather and looks like he came out of a Guns and Roses concert! Casey lets him crash in her house, as he always did when he was a normal cat, and he’s mostly a buzzkill but he’s her responsibility.

The Doom Patrol (and Casey) call a meeting and discuss how Danny, her god creator living in a pocket dimension inside her ambulance, is still gravely injured from his torture in the first arc. Everyone agrees that Casey should go back to living inside the pocket dimension, Dannyland, so he can draw energy from her -- everyone but Casey, who gets royally pissed that she’s being told to leave her life behind. Being reminded that her “life” is not even real to her face does not help matters, but she agrees begrudgingly because Danny needs her.

She goes back home and, uh, makes out with Lotion and then sleeps with him. Turns out Casey is a real life furry! Yeah!

The morning after she spends time watching the commercial for the product her roommate, Terry None, worked on called $#!+ -- what it is no one knows, but Casey is instantly hooked and calls it the best thing ever. ...And then an alien robot fight happens outside her apartment that the Doom Patrol takes care of, after which they help move Casey’s belongings into Dannyland overnight. Next morning as Terry and her part ways, she pulls her into a steamy kiss that’s reciprocated. They fall out of the hole in the apartment, parachute down, and they have sex underneath said parachute on the street. And right after that is when she’ll be offered up her new opportunity in game!



Three key adjectives: Bright, Real, Space Case.

Influential Events:

SO IT TURNS OUT YOU’RE A COMIC BOOK CHARACTER CREATED BY A POWERFUL GOD BEING LIVING INSIDE YOUR AMBULANCE...

What it says on the tin. During the opening issues of the arc, Casey’s entire life is suddenly flipped on its head when she picks up a comic book about her literal origin story told to her by her creator Danny. You see, Casey has always just rolled with the punches of life even when crazy things happened to her. Terry None exploded her old asshole roommate and she just blinked and moved on. A robot was run over by a truck on her street, and she picked up his pieces to try and reconstruct him. A pocket dimension opened up in her ambulance, and she just walked on in with only the slightest reservations. And even her description of her mom makes it obvious she’s some kind of interstellar being, but it never really occurs to Casey even as she narrates it to the reader.

With this revelation however, all the strange reactions make perfect sense - she’s a comic book character! A comic book character who was born from nothing and only behaves and acts as she was informed by her creation. “Casey Brinke” aka Space Case, is Captain of the 33rd Novafangs Starfighter Brigade. Utter nonsense, because a 1960s styled outer space comic is meant to be nonsensical and outside the understanding of how reality actually works. Casey doesn’t behave like a normal person would because she’s not at all a normal person. Being normal is her secret identity. Nothing fazes her!

...Except for this, this one moment that genuinely makes her go through an existential crisis in a hot flash of a second when it shouldn’t be possible for her to have one of those. Imagine if an RP character suddenly realized they weren’t real and just the doll of the omnipotent god being writing them. Casey is the doll and Danny is the writer, but Casey has also gone off the strings with this shocking revelation about what she is.

She never gives a long and lengthy monologue about it, like most comic characters do, but nevertheless it’s clear that she does not appreciate being told she’s some pinocchio who got turned into a real girl. More than that she begins to question the things in life she just accepted as fact, yelling at Danny that he can’t just manipulate her life like she’s an action figure. Danny and her do patch things up after she sets him on fire, but she never really comes to terms with what she’s learned. When it gets brought up she immediately becomes defensive about her existence as a real person, and refuses to accept that she’s “not real” by the standards of normal reality. It’s less so denial and more outright anger and she’s nowhere close to the acceptance phase, as she has yet to truly grapple with the reality.

LITERALLY A BORN CAREGIVER

Casey’s position as an EMT is a job she takes a lot of pride in. She’s the ambulance driver in the duo she makes with her co-worker, and no matter she drives like a lunatic to get to the hospital in time because she never wants to tell anyone their family member/friend/loved one died in the back of her wagon. She’ll get called into work six hours after her shift supposedly ends and go off with only a grumble about not getting enough sleep, because saving lives matters more than her diet being burritos and working on weekends. Casey Brinke drives the motherfucking ambulance and drives it like a beast.

...The thing about this though is that this background is part of her comic book backstory, meaning it was written as part of her core. Danny wrote her as a caregiver and driver for an elderly care facility in space, and she unwittingly was drawn to becoming an EMT in the real world because of this. Being someone who saves peoples lives through getting on time and never giving up on others isn’t a profession, it’s who she literally is.

In later issues her and Terry None end up having a child born from nothing because they had a crazy moment of sex together, and then she meets a grown-up version of him as he’s been turned into an evil Superman clone called The Milkman. Once she realizes who he is, she refuses to fight him like the rest of the Doom Patrol and instead endeavors to talk to him. He's in clear emotional turmoil throughout the fight, questioning his existence, and who he is, and Casey gets that. She literally did the same thing and tries to quell his rage through relating to him with empathy. Turns out that ends up being way more effective to pacify his rage, because they actually end up having a productive and meaningful conversation. Proof that punching the problem isn't solving the problem.

That’s the sort of person she really is deep down - someone who cares a great deal. And throughout the story she’s the one who never gives up, no matter what crazy nonsense she has to go through, and will always fight for those she cares about.

TERRY NONE ENTERING HER LIFE

In the first issue of the comic, Terry None appears as a mail order singing tap dancer to wish Casey a happy birthday! At the end of the song she causes Casey’s roommate to explode, only for Casey to dumbfoundedly say that it isn’t her birthday. Terry shrugs at this and then talks her way into becoming Casey’s new roommate, promising she can pay her share of the rent without issue. They shake hands and ignore the fact that a man has just died in front of them. For Casey this reaction goes back to the whole “comic book character” thing, but past that there’s something else.

Terry None is the daughter of Mr. Nobody, one of the Doom Patrol’s arch enemies. This makes her a “nobody”, in comparison to Casey being a “nothing” and neither of them really “exist.” They are daughters born from the void of their father’s mind; one is born help her father destroy reality, and the other was born to help her father protect it. Thus they are universally drawn to one another, perfectly aligned, perhaps even soulmates if you want to get really deep about it though neither of them have gotten there yet? Casey herself has never really been in a relationship because Danny never really designed her to care about romance in the first place. That means it’s something she is discovering on her own, separate from what was written into her core, and who better to match her than her existential equal.

Now it should be made clear Terry None is not a good woman. She did kill a man by making him explode, and most of the insanity of the second arc is a result of her direct meddling by peddling her father’s patented $#!+. However even when Casey realizes this in later issues, she doesn’t really care. Terry is someone she is inexplicably drawn to, like a magnet to metal, or peanut butter to jelly. They can understand each other - or they could have, if their relationship ever really got further than the two of them confessing that they like each other. But maybe that’s enough too. To like someone and admit that as the first step to a real bond. Something real Casey made on her own without Danny taking part in it.

TAGGING ALONG WITH THE DOOM PATROL

Now one thing that should be made clear is Casey is aware that the world has superheroes in it. It’s the DC Universe, everyone knows about Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Justice League and so on. Superheroes and all the things they bring in are not hot topic news. However the Doom Patrol have always been more small-time heroes and Casey sure has never heard of them before her life went absolutely bonkers out of the coldly calculated blue of her life. They had actually disbanded for a long period of time for reasons not totally explained, but that isn’t the relevant part here. What is relevant is that Casey joins them… sort of.

Casey is a medic and saves lives, but never did she aspire to be called a hero of any sort, and meeting the Doom Patrol… does not change that honestly. It would be nice to say that they inspired her to take on a grand destiny, fight evil, save the world, and so on, but that didn’t really happen. What they did inspire her to do is to go outside the parameters of the established life she made, and venture into unknown territory. Most of the time she complains about the wild adventures, but she doesn’t hesitate to follow this rag-tag bunch of misfits. The Doom Patrol are unique in that they’re kind of lovable assholes, who are heroes but outside the norm compared to the more polished and inspirational DC type. Casey would never follow Superman into a battle because he’s freaking Superman, and she’d be intimidated by him. The Doom Patrol, however, are a lot more casual and chill and it makes it easier for her to be their high-flying ambulance driver.

Most of the comic when the Doom Patrol is fighting, Casey is mostly on the sidelines trying to help get the situation under control and sometimes she’s not involved in the fight at all. Though she joined the team, the contributions she makes has her acting more like the fifth wheel despite the fact that the comic’s branding centers her as the main character of the ensemble. She therefore turns into a true proxy for the reader, while also remaining true to herself and what she’s good at. No she can’t punch people into a wall, but she can zap them with her bio-surge and she prides herself on quick thinking that makes her always early to dodge the hit. That’s worth something to her and to her new friends.

Link to Samples: Link to Sample 1; Link to Sample 2;

Chosen path: Bard
3 Abilities:
Canon ability:
Bio-surge. As detailed in the Casey Brinke Operating Manual, the bio-surge is an electric discharge Casey can release from her right hand when her body is under a moderate-to-high level strain. An attempt at a forced bowel movement, as a listed example, works but so do other things as long as she’s under some kind of physical strain. It can short out basic circuitry and stun her targets temporarily. Not super powerful but it can be handy in a jiffy. Fun at parties? Sure!

Path Ability 1: Message
Path Ability 2: Performance

Why this path?:
Now here is the thing: Casey doesn’t know jack about instruments. She could probably ding a triangle or breathe into a recorder like she’s a 4th grader at the school recital, but she isn’t a music meister because that’s some other DC character. What she is however is a comic book character who bursted out of her pages and is now trying to reconcile the life she has and the life she once had. She’s not the sort who throws punches, or has amazing psychic powers, and she certainly isn’t equipped to save the world, and mainly she exists on the sidelines.

However that aside, the reason I’d fit her as a Bard has to do with the comic narration because Casey is one of the only characters in the comic who actually narrates her thoughts into it omnisciently. The box takes on her voice, her thoughts, and creates a sort of calm over the storm by never filtering how utterly bizarre she is. This isn’t consistent mind you, as there is an omniscient narrator more often than not, but Casey being able to take part in it from a first-person perspective puts her in a unique position. She speaks to the reader outside the comic pages, thus giving her a layer of ‘real’ that other characters wouldn’t have existing in their own world. And as a Bard she can do the same for the heroes she tags along with.

blurb code by photosynthesis