The Bride

Player Name: C
Player Contact(s): c_for_characters, or PM.
Are you over 18? Yes
Do you have any other characters in game?: No
Who invited you?: N/A

Character Name: The Bride
Canon: Creature Commandos (DC Animated Property)
Canon Point: End of Season 1
Age: 194
History: DC Wiki Link
Is this character an AU? What type?: No
Personality: Note: CW in this section for violence, discussion of problematic relationships.

The Bride takes great pains to present herself as prickly, unapproachable, unfriendly, rude, and even hostile. It is primarily a safety mechanism, both for herself and others - anyone close to her is a potential victim of Eric Frankenstein, and opening up to anyone means opening herself up to loss.

This all comes from the foundational trauma of her life - being brought into existence as a reanimated zombie by Victor Frankenstein. She was animated not into the arms of a family, or remembering any previous existence, but by science on a cold table - in short, she came into the universe screaming. This trauma was built on early in her existence, with the looming presence of Eric Frankenstein manifesting as a threat from her very first moments. His murder of her creator, Victor Frankenstein (also her first lover), cemented the idea in her mind that allowing people close only led to pain.

(The problematic relationship between her and her creator has been subsumed by the larger, eternal fight against Eric, but undoubtedly contributes to her suspicion and hostility - in the very first scene with the Bride, she is seen ripping up a romance comic in disgust, after all.)

Her primary armour is a mask of indifference - again and again she has tried to build a life for herself, only to have it interrupted by Eric's obsession. She tries to use rudeness and coldness to drive off others, but nevertheless forms friendships with at least some of those she encounters.

The balance to this is her confidence. She has accepted that she is not human, nor will she be considered as such, so has fully embraced her identity as a monster. She is confident both in her own self-identity, and her abilities. As such, she retains a mostly positive self-image while fending off the attempts of those around her to form friendships with her. I say mostly because while she has embraced her identity as a monster, this is not without its problems.

In the main, she herself doesn't think of herself as having kindness or empathy, though she regularly demonstrates both. Lastly, she has a misanthrophic view of humanity because of how she's been treated throughout her history. Given just how much human history she has participated in, this might be a natural reaction to living through the entire 20th century - it does underline a critical feature of the Bride's personality and thinking: individuals may be acceptable, or be exceptions to her beliefs about humanity - but society and human institutions she treats at best with indifference.

Powers and Abilities:

1. Functional Immortality - Technically, the Bride is a Zombie - she still looks the same as the day she was brought to life, or un-life, depending on perspective. It's never delved into in detail, but the Bride either is aging extremely slowly or not at all. This may be part and parcel of her regenerative ability, rather than a separate ability, but is listed separately for convenience.

2. Regeneration - The Bride seems to possess very quick regeneration, recovering from heavy injuries in a few hours or less than a day. In one instance, she takes a severe beating and is thrown from the top of a castle by the witch Circe, yet when her team arrives within a day, she is seemingly fully recovered. Since she was animated in the same way Eric Frankenstein (the original Frankenstein's Monster) was, it can be posited that the Bride can recover from most injuries, even catastrophic ones, given a day or two - including gunshots, burns, and broken limbs.

3. Enhanced Strength - the Bride has demonstrated enhanced strength on many occasions. In terms of power, she has been seen to power through walls or throw people through them, heave a pickup truck into the air, tear villains apart with her bare hands, and be able to land from significant heights without injury. This also means she can take blows from regular humans without trouble, and even some metahumans. This does not appear to give her any resistance to magic attacks, however.

Inventory: Her personal pair of automatic handguns, and a tourmaline necklace on a gold chain. Which constitute the entirety of her personal possessions.

Sample: TDM Prompts and Replies

When presented with a choice, is the character more likely to stick with tried and true methods? Or make something new up on the fly?

Tried and true methods - though the caveat to that statement is that she's lived long enough that her definition of 'tried and true' methods is likely to be wider than that of most people. But she is very much a being shaped by her past, and this does heavily influence her thinking and choices. A lifetime of fighting and being stalked by Eric Frankenstein has heavily jaded her thinking, and she will often react with an instinctive rejection of new events. For instance, when she merely sees Eric, she opens fire - even though waiting a moment would have revealed he had important information to share.

What is more important to your character, preserving the past or forging a future?

She's very much about looking ahead - though her past haunts her, it also drives her forward - she has been shown to have reinvented herself (stylistically and in terms of roles she plays) many times over the long decades. Though an important limitation is that she is very much alone in the futures she creates - a cynical view of humanity has made it difficult for her to forge personal connections and to open up. (That and Eric continually hunts her, and is a jealous maniac who would harm anyone he believes is too close to her.)

How does your character influence their own story? What about the stories of others?

She very much starts out as a passenger in her own story, forced to join the Creature Commanados because of being incarcerated and not having any legal rights, courtesy of Amanda Waller. She goes along with it, though without much enthusiasm. But as time progresses, she takes a more and more active role in pursuing her own goals, and developing friendships with at least some of her teammates. By the end of the season, she is very much the team leader - having grown a little bit more personable but also having suffering loss she took revenge for. By inches, she is also in the process of playing a more active role in the stories of others, choosing to protect Nina Mazursky and become friends with her. But it remains a very selective few, and an ongoing process of change.

Are you alright with your character’s canon being used as a Recommended Reading?: Yes