app: thegames

[aintyourdad]

OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Froda
Other characters: N/A

IN CHARACTER
Name: Joel
Fandom: The Last of Us
Canon point/AU: Salt Lake City - when he pulls Ellie from the water and gets pistol-whipped by one of the Fireflies, knocking him out.
Journal: aintyourdad
PB: His in-game model.
History: Joel
Plot/world overview

Presentation:

Joel is a bear of a man, in his middle age (close to 50), with dark hair going gray and an unkempt beard. He practically radiates "tough old guy", in the way he looks, moves and speaks. He also, incidentally, speaks with a very thick Texas accent. The persona he projects to the world supports his physical appearance to a "T" - he is gruff, if not downright grouchy, isn't inclined to talk much and generally acts quiet and intimidating. He can be downright scary and thuggish when the situation calls for it.

Pretty much wherever he goes, he quickly earns a reputation for ruthlessness and brutality. For instance, in the Pittsburgh sequence, there's a lot of NPC chatter to this effect - attributing his actions to those of a whole army, for instance! He instills fear wherever he goes. In the winter chapter, some enemy NPCs actually run away from him when they spot him coming, he is that scary. This is mostly something that Joel sees as positive, or at least necessary - if people fear him, they are less likely to try and kill him (or those he cares about), after all.

The one chink in this armor of cold-blooded ruthlessness (perhaps) is his relationship with Ellie, which is primarily that of a protective father figure. Ellie has, over time, become his "baby girl" - and he can be tender and caring with her in a way that he very rarely is with anyone else. Which is not to say that she nullifies his brutality to any great extent - he can and has tortured and murdered a lot of people to keep her safe. He is fiercely protective of her - emphasis on the fierce, and anyone who thinks they might be able to use her against him will quickly learn just how nasty Joel can be.

Motivations:

Joel's primary motivation is survival - he says it himself to Tess, early in the game. He takes a very strict "survival of the fittest" mentality, and is generally on no one's side but his own (and the very few people he actually cares about). To this end, he is very much on the amoral side of things, having done a lot of terrible stuff to other people in the name of surviving.

This doesn't, however, mean that he's evil, or that he enjoys doing bad things. He's built up a lot of psychological defenses over the years, because he is deeply damaged by the things that have happened to him since the outbreak of the Cordyceps infection. The first major trauma he suffered was the death of his daughter, Sarah, at the hands of a soldier (not, significantly, due directly to the infection itself). This has made him extremely wary of military types, and in an even broader sense, has made him extremely reluctant to open up to anyone. He knows that anyone can die at any time, anyone could be brutally taken away from him, so he doesn't allow himself to care about very many people at all.

But when he does care, he will do anything to keep those he cares about safe and with him. To the point of selfishness, even. It's not an altruistic kind of love, that's for sure. In general, Joel has a very dim view of humanity and knowing a couple of good people doesn't change that viewpoint - in fact, in his mind, it only reinforces the worthlessness of the rest. This makes him seem downright sociopathic at times, and this is largely intentional on his part - again, keeping people away is a key part of his defense mechanisms.

His single biggest fear (as per his canon point, at least) is Ellie being taken away from him. He loves her desperately, and she has, in essence, taken the place of his dead daughter. He is afraid that losing her will break him completely, and he will lose all will to live, as nearly happened when Sarah died. Essentially, coming to care for her has been as much a liability as a strength, in his eyes. He did it almost against his will, which is pretty much how all of the truly caring relationships he's had have developed (for instance, Tess, whose death is still a major sore spot for him).

On the other hand, he also recognizes that his relationship with Ellie is symbiotic - in the same way that he has kept her safe through much of their cross-country trek, she, too, has saved his life on numerous occasions. The two of them together are nearly unstoppable, and they rely on each other on multiple levels - both for physical safety and emotional and psychological support.

Setting:

First and foremost, Joel will be highly motivated to get Ellie out of the tribute system as soon as possible. He will do just about anything to ensure her safety and relative comfort. Similarly, if he were to find himself in an arena situation in which one of them needed to die, he would take the fall for her, without a second thought.

Otherwise, he will be highly suspicious and skeptical of Capitol life and the world mechanics in general - it's not that he's not used to terrible violence, he most definitely is! But in his mind, it's always got that reasoning behind it of survival. The idea of making other people do that stuff to each other so that rich people can watch it for fun will disgust him. But he'll likely want to keep his head down as much as possible, not draw too much attention to himself and Ellie, and keep the two of them as safe as possible.

SAMPLES
First Person Thread:

[This is, possibly, one of the strangest things that Joel has ever experienced - and that's saying something. Living through what essentially amounts to the apocalypse means that he has seen and done a lot of things - a lot of things he would never, ever have imagined for himself before the outbreak.

But dying, and then coming back to tell about it? That one definitely never made the list before. They were some kind of dog, he recalls - vividly, as a matter of fact. Somehow, that makes it all the worse, as far as Joel is concerned. He remembers seemingly every moment of it, from the time he found himself cornered by the animals, to the first one that managed to take a chunk out of him, to the feeling of his bones breaking in their jaws and the sudden, sure knowledge of his own impending death.

Maybe, in those last moments, he had some inkling of what Tess had felt in her last hours. Some very small inkling, anyway. At least he has no infection to worry about here. A small blessing. But still, now he's here, in this sterile place, unlike anything he's seen back home in two decades, and they want him to talk about it? What even is there to talk about?

It takes him several minutes before he even picks up the device, and then, once it's in his hand, he just sort of stares blankly at it for several minutes more. Finally, when he realizes that, yes, he is indeed going to have to actually speak at some point, he opts for:]

Things happen, and we move on. I don't see how this is any different. You had your fun, now get me the hell outta here.

Prose:

He didn't fight them, when they came for him. Joel learned a long, long time ago that, where the military was concerned, it was best to just keep his head down and his mouth shut. No point doing something stupid that would only make life harder for him, after all. Until he had a full grasp on the situation, keeping his eyes and ears open was the best thing to do.

And if survival was the name of the game (literally, perhaps) well, Joel knew how to survive. He was one of the best, had cheated death more times than he could count, had outlived far more people than he ever should have or ever really wanted to. If they wanted to put him in some arena and make him kill other people for fun, well, that was pretty fucked up, in the grand scheme of things, but if it was a chance for him to get out of this hellhole permanently, he sure as shit wasn't going to pull his punches.

Joel never pulled his punches.

One thing he wasn't used to, was people watching. Being watched was definitely new. For twenty years, there had been no more infrastructure to speak of, and even in the Boston QZ, it was pretty easy to elude the ostensible authorities. Electronic surveillance no longer existed, so to be under it constantly was the most off-putting thing about this whole experience. But like everything else, he shoved it aside - the watchers weren't the immediate source of danger. And the weapons, well - a gun would've really been nice. Guns were always nice, when you could get them. But Joel had other skills, too, and he knew lots of ways to kill - kill efficiently, kill silently.

After a moment of consideration, he went for the bow. He could've, perhaps, thrown a knife, but he always did better with knives in close quarters. The bow was better for range. There was no show in it, no performance - he simply and quickly nocked an arrow, drew back, took a brief moment to aim at one of the targets, and fired. It hit, squarely in the head. If it had been a clicker, it would've gone down without a sound, and without Joel having to waste another arrow.

Just the way he liked it - quick, quiet and efficient. He gave a wary glance up at the people watching - he didn't care what they thought, per se, but he also wasn't inclined to draw too much attention to himself, or unduly incur their wrath.

Not yet, at least.

What is your character scored:

Probably either a 9 or 10. Joel is actually very well-suited to the arena environment, coming as he does from a zombie-survival-horror setting. He's a baseline human, but that might even be an advantage for him against those who are used to having powers and suddenly have to rely on regular human strength and smarts to get them through - that's been Joel's whole life for the past twenty years! He's also very, very desensitized to violence and is not at all afraid to kill in the name of survival. And he's incredibly adaptable, he's used to improvising weapons, med kits, even explosives from whatever he can find around. Furthermore, he's developed a very keen sense of hearing, and he's quite good at being stealthy/sneaking up on people from behind. He's actually got a pretty good mind for strategizing and picking his battles. His only major detriments are possibly his age (he's near-50 so, while he's damn good he might still not be as good as someone with similar skills but much younger) and, well, his serious lack of charisma and inability to play the publicity/sponsor game (then again, his potential viciousness and willingness to kill - to say nothing of the potential drama surrounding his relationship with Ellie - might be appealing to sponsors despite his lack of public charm and grace).