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[nerdninja]

APPLICATION
Player Name: Sam
Plurk Handle: estamir
Other characters: n/a

Character Name: Donatello
Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW comics)
Character Journal: nerdninja
OU, AU, or OC? OU
If canon, canon point: Post-Vengeance, end of #50.
PB: n/a
Superhero Name: Metalhead. (He was half joking when he floated it, couldn't think of anything better, and while borrowing the name of the robot his soul got stuck in for a short while isn't entirely comfy, he figures it works well enough as a self-reminder that issues are made to be dealt with, not avoided.)

History: On Turtlepedia, and there's a detailed chronology here.

Additional OC and AU Background: n/a

Personality: If each of the turtles has a niche, Donatello's is undoubtedly the smart one.

It's a point that's reiterated fairly often, both by the rest of the cast and by Donnie himself - because he's not only the smartest of his family, but he knows he's the smartest of his family, and he can be a bit prideful about it. (Or to paraphrase Mikey, his intelligence is off the charts and he's even got charts to prove it.) He's not a flat-out dick about it, but he can be a little casual about using terms that he's going to have to back up and explain himself on, and he's sometimes seen fighting clear frustration when everyone else can't keep up with him.

It also causes him to butt heads with Leo quite a bit early in canon; they have fairly opposing views on the world, with Leo being more intuitive and spiritual where Donnie is skeptical and sees things in terms of facts and evidence. When the reincarnation elements of the plot are first brought to light, Leo takes it very seriously, while Donnie is skeptical for a good long while about it. Their differences in judgment sometimes cause them to clash - dramatically - about how they pursue their goals and what those goals should be. That said, this is mostly an early canon problem; they come to a much better understanding of each other by the time the City Fall arc ends, and while they're not without their disagreements later on, they're also able to work together and turn their different viewpoints on how to prioritize the threats around them into a plan to set the Foot Clan and Krang's army against each other and kill two birds with one stone.

His skepticism is far more pronounced early in canon, but Donnie's perspective on the unexplainable has progressed significantly. Part of this is the influence of the Fugitoid, a brilliant scientist from Dimension X whose mind has been trapped in a robotic body; he's the one who points out to Donnie that while there's no evidence that proves reincarnation, there's also nothing that disproves it, so summarily dismissing the possibility without giving it a fair shake is perhaps what's truly crazy about the concept. And later, when Donnie's own life is saved by temporarily transferring his mind into a robot, he seems to have an easier time accepting that as strange and unscientific as it all is, he's still himself, so there might be something to all this "soul" nonsense after all.

A more open mind about the supernatural doesn't stop him from looking at things in the most logical sense he can parse them, though - he's very cool-headed about looking at the risks versus the benefits. After a brief time-traveling jaunt in which the turtles visit a future in which the other three died, Shredder rules the world, and his older self has given up, Donnie shocks the other three by admitting that he has considered giving up - not necessarily any time soon, but he's thought about what happens when the day comes where there's no point in fighting anymore. He says all this after coming down very harshly on his future self, though, and not long after, he willingly puts himself in a very risky position during their attack on the Technodrome and very nearly dies for his trouble. Despite the talk about how he can see himself giving up someday, he certainly doesn't seem to be doing so any time soon (although on the other hand, dying to save the world had a very clear benefit despite the high cost...).

So he's a little too smart for his own good, and has trouble letting go of logical thinking even in situations where it might be more comforting to believe in miracles. But he is, after all, a teenager, and he's growing up in a weird situation, so it's a little understandable that his teen angst might be a little more dramatic as a result.

He still has some fairly typical teenage traits about him. He can be pretty sarcastic, and is probably tied with Raph for average number of witty asides per issue. He gets frustrated with the lack of shared interests in his family (despite how deeply he cares for all of them), and is seen to cope with this by spending a fair amount of time online, playing games and frequenting message boards, and having occasional very petty arguments with that one dude whose grammar he's always correcting. (Said dude, when he finally meets him in person, becomes one of the best friends Donnie has outside his family, despite theirs being a very argumentative and grumpy friendship, precisely because they like so many of the same things, and he has few people he can share that with.) He resists authority when he thinks he knows better, and has angrily walked out on a family meeting because he thought the rest of them were being idiots about prioritizing.

He's getting better about realizing that he doesn't always know better, but he's still a teenager, after all.

Canon Powers: Superpowers, not really - the fact that he's a walking, talking, five foot turtle mutant is weird, but the most the turtles seem to get out of it on a powers level is that their physical condition seems to be pretty peak. Human characters like Karai have still proven perfectly capable of giving them a run for their money.

One thing that might fall in here, possibly: Donatello spent part of one story arc with his mind trapped in a robot while his body was recovering from nearly being killed. He comments at one point on how he's able to process things differently, mentally, as a result of being a robot - his multitasking and his mental processing speed improve considerably. There's no indication that this persisted when he returned to his own body, but I think this experience might serve to help him adjust to the powers he'll be picking up for the game more easily.

Game powers: I'm shooting for him to fall into the 2 category here, although if I've missed my guess on how these powers qualify, I'm absolutely open to revision here! These might be more like two applications of one power, even, but what I'm aiming for is:

1) Mechanical intuition: an innate understanding of mechanics and technology, even that's new to him. He'll be able to easily understand how machines he encounters are built and operated, and he'll be much better at coming up with them himself, on the fly. (Some versions of TMNT seem to portray him as having this level of mechanical intuition already, to be honest, but IDW has far less feats of ridiculous MacGuyvering and has him team up with two more experienced scientists to tackle the main mechanical problem of the series so far, so I think that as a superpower, this would still be new for him.)

2) Machine manipulation: a somewhat specialized form of electrical manipulation. He'll be able to get machines working without touching the on switch, so to speak - but as this is just him giving the appropriate signals, it'd be limited to making machines do things they're actually built to do, or turning them off from the things they're meant to do. He can make a car go, stop, he can drive it without actually driving, but he can't make it disassemble and transform into a jet with this power alone. For more sophisticated systems, this does let him bypass a lot of security systems (although it won't get him past the ones with Plot Armor). This would be touch range; he doesn't have to be touching the controls, but he needs to be able to touch the machine somewhere.

Abilities:
- Mastery of ninjutsu and combat martial arts. Donnie's style is canonically described as "coldly analytical and deliberate;" his weapon of choice is the bo staff, but he's also trained unarmed and the turtles have been seen using shuriken as well.
- First aid; he lacks formal training in it, but he's patched up many of the other characters in response to their inability to go through the health care system, and has handled everything from setting Splinter's broken leg to getting himself set up with an IV.
- Mechanical expertise. His technical skills, before application of game powers here, do seem to fall more under "a ton of very good self-teaching" rather than "supernatural ability" in this particular version of TMNT, but this being a comic book, they nonetheless seem to push the boundaries of what that would logically look like. He's also had some experience working with alien scientists over the course of the plot, and has thus learned some things outside of his world's limitations. If his powers are shut off for some reason, he won't be incapiciated in the technical sense so much as he'll be more limited.
- Also plays tabletop RPGs and is totally awesome at nitpicking your grammar on the internet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Setting: Being that the 31st century is kind of a technonerd's wet dream, Donatello will have no problem finding things to occupy himself with. More than just that, though - his natural desire to answer all the big questions put in front of him mean that he'll be very interested in what brought them there and how they can reverse the effects, and he does have enough to worry about going on back home that joining the Legion to help them free up resources for the research will be a bit of a no-brainer (and, of course, he'll want to try and work on it himself). He'll be in it to actively pursue the problem of what happened and how to fix it long-term, and won't be content to only take on the superhero missions while others handle the science.

SAMPLES
Per the temporary app note, here is a test drive thread. The top level and a couple of the posts in the subthread with Nova should hit the word count.

Additional info: I can't think of anything that applies!