Application

[brunonono]

→ PLAYER INFO

Name: Kathryn
Age: 30+
Contact: PMs to this account; YawningDodo; YawningDodo#8434 on Discord
Character(s) in game: n/a (formerly Thackery Binx)
Permissions: here

→ CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Bruno Madrigal
Age: 50
Canon: Encanto (2021)
Canon point: Post-movie
History: Wiki link
Personality:

(-) Socially awkward: The most immediately noticeable thing about Bruno is that he's awkward as hell. In conversation he shifts topics rapidly and will abruptly try to end or literally walk away from uncomfortable encounters. At some times he misses cues from the people around him and rambles about whatever is on his mind; at others he's weirdly silent or blunt. The animosity of the villagers and his sister Pepa toward him in the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" seems to indicate that he has a tendency to come off as malicious in his predictions (which Bruno interprets as everyone always assuming the worst of him); one longstanding misunderstanding began on Pepa's wedding day when Bruno attempted to offer her emotional support and instead ramped up her anxiety so badly that she involuntarily created a hurricane with her Gift.

(-) Anxious: Bruno has a perpetually tired, worried look to him. His mother's expectations for her family were very high from the beginning out of fear of losing her home once again, so Bruno would have grown up having it impressed upon him that he needed to use his Gift for the benefit of his family and the village in order to earn (and thereby keep) the miracle that first gave the family their magic. After decades of inability to meet expectations, he's pessimistic about his own abilities and self-blaming about the results of sharing his visions, and he spent the last ten years convinced that his family was better off with him gone. He copes with his anxiety using superstitious rituals that seem so deeply ingrained at this point as to be compulsions, such as rhythmically knocking on wood and holding his breath with his fingers crossed while crossing a threshold.

(+) Nurturing: The depths of Bruno's anxiety are born from the depths of his love for his family. He loves his family and wants them to succeed and be safe more than he wants happiness for himself. When one of Bruno's visions appeared to implicate his niece, Mirabel, in the future destruction of their home, Bruno hid the evidence and disappeared from family life in order to protect her from the fallout. Additionally, Bruno is a loving pet owner with an affinity for rats; during his ten years living in the walls of the family Casita, he kept an unknown number of rats; they appeared to be very well cared for and closely bonded with him. It's notable that the rats stay with Bruno despite never being caged, allow him to handle them freely, and even fetch things for him when he has no magical ability regarding rats or any other animals--he just has an affinity for rats, treats them well and trains them, and is loved by them in return.

(-) Unassertive: Intimidating or browbeating Bruno is not exactly a challenge. His choice to disappear rather than share his vision about Mirabel was also a choice to disappear rather than stand up to his mother over the matter. Additionally, after a decade sworn off having visions, it took less than ten minutes for Mirabel to more or less bully him into giving her one. Bruno is sensitive to the disapproval of others, particularly his own family, and would rather avoid confrontation than push back. There is a limit to this, but Bruno's ability to confront or stand up to someone is specific to when it's in defense of someone he loves and thinks can't defend themselves.

(+) Creative: Bruno is a genuinely creative individual. He enjoys acting (and uses it as a tool to overcome his fear by playing at being characters braver than himself). He entertains himself by inventing imagined telenovelas and other TV shows he pretends his rats are acting out (in reality he just poses the rats with handmade stand-in cards that have holes for their little faces). His home in the walls of the Casita is chock full of evidence of his creativity: most of the furniture is not only made from cast-off items, but made well and pleasingly arranged; he decorates the walls with drawings of his rats on imagined adventures; and he's built mazes, platforms, and ramps for his rats onto the walls. He also appears to have prioritized getting books and music for his living space in the walls.

Suitability: While Bruno is generally likely to be too scared to voluntarily go on missions, he'll have three strong reasons for sticking around and engaging: his overwhelming desire to find a way to return home to his family; his fear of the outside world being greater than his fear of ADI; and (I anticipate) his desire to look after and protect younger characters.

Powers/Abilities:
Mundane Abilities:

Parkour: Bruno is surprisingly good at running, jumping, and traversing difficult terrain; he's both physically fit and fleet of foot, able to jump and scramble using minimal hand- and footholds.

Handiwork: While Bruno's drawings are slightly crude in execution, the furniture he constructs is both sturdy and pleasingly designed in a sort of hipster chic way. He also understands at least the basics of home repair; he knows how to make spackle and patch cracked walls.

Rat Training: His rats not only like him; they do his bidding. Mainly, Bruno appears to have taught his rats to retrieve things for him from the public areas of the house, which would have required quite a bit of work in terms of first teaching the behavior and then expanding it to the point that the rats understand what specific things he wants them to fetch for him.

Magical Ability:

Precognition: Like most of his family, Bruno has a single magical Gift. His Gift is the ability to create a whirlwind of sand in which he (and anyone with him) can see the future; in order to do so he needs an open space and enough sand to create a large circle around himself and anyone viewing the vision with him. He is able to direct his visions to specific subjects and future events and can refocus on specific elements during the vision, but may see events out of order and removed from context, sometimes making it difficult to understand the full story. When the vision concludes he is left with a slab of green glass with a key image from the vision embedded in it; if the future is uncertain the image may shift when viewed from different angles.
Proposed nerf: As precognition powers are very tricky to handle in RP, my expectation is that any use of Bruno's powers past small events in the very near future (as in a matter of a week or less) will require a player plot, and that his visions will generally provide only superficial and/or extremely vague information about upcoming events. Bruno will be very reluctant to use his powers and more reluctant still to do what's necessary to charge his Entity fear battery so I don't anticipate him having many visions in general. I'm also open to his powers being completely nerfed down to nothing, as the Eye is traditionally unable to see the future but remains the most appropriate Entity for him.

Entity Affinity: The Eye. Bruno was feared by the villagers because it seemed to them as though their fate was sealed as soon as he saw something bad coming for them, as though the act of seeing caused the misfortune in and of itself (while he is equally likely to have positive visions, it's the negative ones that get remembered). By the time he was 40, Bruno was reluctant to use his powers for fear of seeing (and thereby confirming) something he'd rather not know, and his vision regarding Mirabel was knowledge he feared would destroy her along with the rest of his family.

Inventory: Bruno will arrive with his clothing (brown shirt and pants; sandals; green ruana), and three rats. This will be a serious downgrade in the number of rats living with him.

Samples: Sample One and Sample Two.