En Dwi Gast - The Grandmaster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amenable_lunatic) wrote2019-08-31 06:43 pm
amenable_lunatic) wrote2019-08-31 06:43 pm
Entry tags:
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User Name/Nick: Rei
User DW: N/A
E-mail: m0765674 @ moreheadstate.edu
Other Characters: Freeza
Character Name: En Dwi Gast - The Grandmaster
Series: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Age: Only slightly younger than the universe itself.
From When?: Post-Thor Ragnarok, after the Infinity War snap.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate - Your first introduction to the Grandmaster is a short brainwashing video kickoff/introduction to the planet Sakkar and him as its ruler/creator, set to Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka. It declares that you now belong to him and that's good because you're garbage somebody else threw away but he, specifically, loves you and finds you useful. Then he melts a guy for what according to wikis amounts to losing a two-humped camel that he really wanted to win in a game of chance. This sums up literally everything that's wrong with him. The lives of people mean little save how they can contribute to his continued entertainment and comfort, and he actively orchestrates the world around him to put that theory into practice on a daily basis. Part of this is tied into his being an Elder of the Universe, each of whom is sustained by acting on one particular fixation. For his brother, the Collector, it's collecting things, and for him, it's games, in all their forms, and making people play them with or for him. He literally built this planet to draw in people and things from around the universe to trap them there with him so he could use them. He created his own jamjar game.
Item: N/A
Arrival: The Grandmaster was snatched at a moment of potential death. The "snap" in the MCU killed a random 50 percent of the universe. Word-of-God is he was not affected, but again. 50/50 chance.
Abilities/Powers: The Grandmaster in the MCU does not display the same array of powers as he does in 616. However, his actor acknowledges he probably retained them and doesn't use them in especially obvious ways, and that's how I'm choosing to interpret it, much in the same way the Collector is kept subtle in terms of how powerful he is.
Most important is that as an Elder of the Universe, he is virtually ageless, immortal, and unkillable through the Power Primordial -- leftover mystical junk from the Big Bang. Each of their kind are beings who are among the last living beings who first lived shortly after the universe became the universe. They wield the power primordial, essentially through acting on a particular focus, as described in the Warden/Inmate classification above. This makes him immune to aging, disease, and injury. He does not need to eat, sleep, or drink to survive, but he will do any of these things because he likes to.
The only other semi-confirmed power he has in the MCU is telepathy, which is only confirmed through Word of God and not in the canon itself. If he does possess telepathic powers, he gives zero indication of such a thing.
Other powers he may have include super speed, strength, durability, etc, as well as teleportation, the ability to heal, even restore dead people to life and temporarily pass that ability on to others. He can't resurrect someone of his own kind who has been killed, and there is a cutoff time for resurrection -- you kinda have to be fresh. (If this is true in the MCU as well, then he's just that much worse as a person because it never even occurs to him to use it because why the Hell would he?) He can transform and change size, as well as change people and objects around him.
Virtually all of these things are nerfed on the Barge. He is slightly above average in terms of strength, speed, and durability in strictly human terms, and definitely above average in comparison to a human with his apparent near-sedentary lifestyle.
In terms of skills and abilities that are not supernatural, he has a highly developed intellect and can calculate "diverse low information probabilities within a tenth of a second and and remember countless rules and data," according to his wiki. He acclimates to new technology, tools, etc extremely quickly. He'll be like this about things like musical instruments as well (he's shown to be able to play the keyboard/synthesizer or some form of one in the movie). His sense of hearing, taste, touch, and sight are also said to be more advanced than that of normal humans (since he's not one) but not to an unusual extreme.
Personality: The first time you see this man, you'll probably clock his key outward personality traits pretty quickly. He's affable, insistently friendly if you're not rude to him in a way he'll outwardly acknowledge, always up for a little fun, and curious about the new and unusual. He's fun at parties. In fact, he throws the best parties. For all his selfishness he also just seems to be pretty cool with letting people be themselves and be their best whatever they are -- he just also accepts you're fragile and probably going to die and hey, he might even be the one that points you in that direction if it looks good and pleases a crowd (or just him)! and that's where his first impression may start to take a nosedive.
The Grandmaster is an egomaniac and a hedonist whose motivation comes out of his desire to live in comfort, pleasure, and diversion, and he's literally bent all of reality on the planet Sakkar around this goal. His very being is centered around the idea of games -- playing them and watching other people play them, in every form and function you can think of. It literally sustains him. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes these games will involve physically and emotionally compromising the people who are chosen as players, and the very nature of Sakkar suggests that the players are not always willingly playing. In fact, most of them are not.
The world, filled with garbage of every possible form, has a sky that is dotted with hundreds, possibly thousands of portals, through which people, animals, and objects of all kinds are drawn to the world, and leaving through any of them requires tech that's advanced and powerful enough to pass through them without breaking apart -- and unfortunately, the Grandmaster is the only one who possesses that technology. He built the world to work that way. People who wish to leave (not all do) can compete in the arena in the Contest of Champions, his favorite game, and if they win against his Champion (at the time of the film, the Hulk) they can leave. Presumably, he'll provide you a ship to do this. The trouble is, if he's feeling particularly attached to his Champion (or decides he'd like to keep you), he'll make sure the match is thrown if you get close to winning. As yet, nobody is known to have won their freedom.
"He's a lunatic, but he can be amenable" summed up the Grandmaster's personality perfectly when Loki was explaining the man to his brother. It's a fair summation to make when observing from the outside and trying to make sense of his behavior. It is not effective or accurate to write his behavior off as just "crazy," though it's probably fair to say that any person who has been alive for millions and millions of years may not be completely sane in a conventional sense. He is completely aware of what he is doing and displays on more than one occasion he's aware of how it affects other people; what he lacks is any reason to think the latter should have an affect on how he does things.
He kills and allows his followers to kill with only some discrimination when it comes to reasoning. (Interrupting him is not a capital offense, but losing or destroying a prize he covets, however pointless? You're dead, Jim.) His upbeat nature, or the way he intends to present it, means inconvenience means there's an upshot: he can blame somebody. Presumably, this puts a person in danger. People who earn his favor and therefore a place above the garbage and access to wealth, tech, power, parties, are his "friends," even his "cousins," his "Champions," etc, but failing when you've reached this status means you can still fall out of favor and doesn't bar you from demotion, if not execution.
Despite all of this, the Grandmaster has the potential for positive change. His "gaming" motivation can be worked around, as not every 'game' needs to involve killing or pulling in people who don't consent to play along. He is shown to be able to form relationships and seeming friendships, though most are centered around working relationships and jobs, or a mutual willingness to pass the time enjoyably. At the very least, he does seem to care about the Hulk as his Champion. Unlike most of the people on Sakkar -- who make a life there because they have no choice and take what enjoyment they can -- the story of being the universe's castaways, brought to Sakkar and its creator to love them and treasure them and give them purpose? Seems to be something the Hulk is extremely vulnerable to. Everything that he is, without Bruce Banner, is loved and celebrated and reinforced. The Hulk is loved for being the Hulk and is not feared. He is happy and his genuine happiness seems to make the Grandmaster very happy, himself. One could only imagine how much more it would feed him if the majority of his citizens felt as actualized and fulfilled. It's possible there were others on Sakkar, like Topaz (his bodyguard) who were of a similar mind. That's something that could be fostered by the right people.
Barge Reactions: While the Grandmaster will ignore the purpose of the Barge right up until someone's smart enough to gamify it for him, he is actually going to mostly love the place. There's a lack of working staff here, of course, and that's a problem, but opportunity around every corner and a rich, semi-deverse population. (Sakkar was more diverse; lotta straight-up humanoids around here, Admiral, and you should live a little and get some lobster people up in here or something.) Most of the floods, he'll love, because change and surprise interest him. Breaches that make him another person might be more unsettling, and whether he will reflect on this or just pretend it didn't happen depends entirely upon what happens in the breach in question. He is not likely to be afraid when threatened by especially dangerous Inmates or Wardens, save from like -- a casual observer's POV, like he's watching a movie. Everyone should seem interesting to him until they prove otherwise. You will always have potential. He will also never get a job. Attempts to suggest, command, or persuade him to look into getting a job will render him incapable of comprehending what you are saying, whether written or spoken, and attempts to strongarm him into it by taking things away from him will always be framed as you being mean for absolutely no reason.
Path to Redemption: The Grandmaster values actual lives about as much as a person is capable of valuing the lives of NPCs in a video game, which means that sometimes caring about you getting hurt or dying involves calling for a round of applause for being a good sport or expiring in an especially interesting way. He views people as only as important as they are useful or enriching for him, in most cases. A Warden's job will largely be to do their best to encourage him to form stronger, more meaningful relationships with other people and to place people, in general, at a higher value. He has shown that using his influence to actually fulfill and validate people may have a positive effect on him just as much as them, so this may be a good place to start.
Just. Keep an eye on the way he socializes, especially if his alliances look like they might reinforce his bad behaviors.
His fixation on games will not go away because it's literally what keeps him alive. If your approach to him is to convince him to give it up and functionally allow him to become vulnerable and age and die, you will never get anywhere. If you want to encourage new behaviors, you may be wise to use the gimmick.
A patient hand is needed, but for the most part you can take comfort in knowing that he knows you're trying and may even encourage you, but that doesn't mean he's actively changing. He's very good at projecting an image and appearing to live by it in shallow ways (like his dislike of the word "slave" when referring to the people he keeps prisoner to fight in the arena -- he prefers "prisoners with jobs" but this division of terms seems to be more amusing and an image for the masses than a moral policy). So you have to stay on him to follow through and challenge him to think when he'd rather have fun.
Deal: N/A
History: His history as shown in the wikia article. The movie ends with the uprising on Sakkar over, with him being found by the remaining revolutionaries, and he declares the revolution a "tie" and congratulates everyone, including himself, because you can't have an uprising without someone to rise up against. It is left open what happened from there, but again, I'm running on the notion that nobody knows he can actually defend himself. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say things probably returned to the way they were, sans his Champion and a few known minions. When the 'snap' came in Infinity War, he was at home minding his own business.
Sample Journal Entry: Link to Test Drive Meme
Sample RP: It took an embarrassingly long time for the Grandmaster to realize he had changed. He felt the turbulence in the early hours of the morning, only slightly stirred in his repose. It was only when he dressed, preparing to emerge to the Inmate baths, that he thought that his robe felt different on him, didn't quite fit. Which was an understatement, because the sleeves went far beyond the actual length of his arms. Should have been impossible; he took a number of things from the communal wardrobe but this was tailored.
The face he saw in the mirror, he realized when he went to look, was so much younger than he could remember being, that he did not initially believe it was his own face at all. If it weren't for the smudge of his eye makeup still present or the marred blue mark on his chin, it would be plausibly deniable.
But no. There was not a line to his face, which he actually somewhat disliked. His fingers, small and short touched a cheek with actual baby fat, even a little lighter in pallor, and ran through a shock of mussed blue-black hair with not an ounce of his beloved silver.
Curious.
He nodded to himself.
Worth taking a closer look and testing.
He glanced back the way he had come and sighed at the form still slumbering in his bed, recognizing that while he normally would have felt some fleeting desire to revisit or even just look back on a night of revelry with fondness, he was bored and unmoved and frankly feeling a little intruded upon.
That was more unusual than the transformation.
Turbulence. They had said something about that.
He wrapped his robe around himself a little tighter and tied it off, running a comb (grabbed through the cloth of his sleeves) through his hair to make himself just a little more presentable, and then he traipsed back to his not-yet-empty bed. He grasped the blankets and sheets and dragged them off with more strength than he should have had at this size, if he weren't who he was.
His visitor sputtered awake, confused.
"Wake up and get out; this isn't legal or interesting anymore."
Special Notes: N/A
User DW: N/A
E-mail: m0765674 @ moreheadstate.edu
Other Characters: Freeza
Character Name: En Dwi Gast - The Grandmaster
Series: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Age: Only slightly younger than the universe itself.
From When?: Post-Thor Ragnarok, after the Infinity War snap.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate - Your first introduction to the Grandmaster is a short brainwashing video kickoff/introduction to the planet Sakkar and him as its ruler/creator, set to Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka. It declares that you now belong to him and that's good because you're garbage somebody else threw away but he, specifically, loves you and finds you useful. Then he melts a guy for what according to wikis amounts to losing a two-humped camel that he really wanted to win in a game of chance. This sums up literally everything that's wrong with him. The lives of people mean little save how they can contribute to his continued entertainment and comfort, and he actively orchestrates the world around him to put that theory into practice on a daily basis. Part of this is tied into his being an Elder of the Universe, each of whom is sustained by acting on one particular fixation. For his brother, the Collector, it's collecting things, and for him, it's games, in all their forms, and making people play them with or for him. He literally built this planet to draw in people and things from around the universe to trap them there with him so he could use them. He created his own jamjar game.
Item: N/A
Arrival: The Grandmaster was snatched at a moment of potential death. The "snap" in the MCU killed a random 50 percent of the universe. Word-of-God is he was not affected, but again. 50/50 chance.
Abilities/Powers: The Grandmaster in the MCU does not display the same array of powers as he does in 616. However, his actor acknowledges he probably retained them and doesn't use them in especially obvious ways, and that's how I'm choosing to interpret it, much in the same way the Collector is kept subtle in terms of how powerful he is.
Most important is that as an Elder of the Universe, he is virtually ageless, immortal, and unkillable through the Power Primordial -- leftover mystical junk from the Big Bang. Each of their kind are beings who are among the last living beings who first lived shortly after the universe became the universe. They wield the power primordial, essentially through acting on a particular focus, as described in the Warden/Inmate classification above. This makes him immune to aging, disease, and injury. He does not need to eat, sleep, or drink to survive, but he will do any of these things because he likes to.
The only other semi-confirmed power he has in the MCU is telepathy, which is only confirmed through Word of God and not in the canon itself. If he does possess telepathic powers, he gives zero indication of such a thing.
Other powers he may have include super speed, strength, durability, etc, as well as teleportation, the ability to heal, even restore dead people to life and temporarily pass that ability on to others. He can't resurrect someone of his own kind who has been killed, and there is a cutoff time for resurrection -- you kinda have to be fresh. (If this is true in the MCU as well, then he's just that much worse as a person because it never even occurs to him to use it because why the Hell would he?) He can transform and change size, as well as change people and objects around him.
Virtually all of these things are nerfed on the Barge. He is slightly above average in terms of strength, speed, and durability in strictly human terms, and definitely above average in comparison to a human with his apparent near-sedentary lifestyle.
In terms of skills and abilities that are not supernatural, he has a highly developed intellect and can calculate "diverse low information probabilities within a tenth of a second and and remember countless rules and data," according to his wiki. He acclimates to new technology, tools, etc extremely quickly. He'll be like this about things like musical instruments as well (he's shown to be able to play the keyboard/synthesizer or some form of one in the movie). His sense of hearing, taste, touch, and sight are also said to be more advanced than that of normal humans (since he's not one) but not to an unusual extreme.
Personality: The first time you see this man, you'll probably clock his key outward personality traits pretty quickly. He's affable, insistently friendly if you're not rude to him in a way he'll outwardly acknowledge, always up for a little fun, and curious about the new and unusual. He's fun at parties. In fact, he throws the best parties. For all his selfishness he also just seems to be pretty cool with letting people be themselves and be their best whatever they are -- he just also accepts you're fragile and probably going to die and hey, he might even be the one that points you in that direction if it looks good and pleases a crowd (or just him)! and that's where his first impression may start to take a nosedive.
The Grandmaster is an egomaniac and a hedonist whose motivation comes out of his desire to live in comfort, pleasure, and diversion, and he's literally bent all of reality on the planet Sakkar around this goal. His very being is centered around the idea of games -- playing them and watching other people play them, in every form and function you can think of. It literally sustains him. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes these games will involve physically and emotionally compromising the people who are chosen as players, and the very nature of Sakkar suggests that the players are not always willingly playing. In fact, most of them are not.
The world, filled with garbage of every possible form, has a sky that is dotted with hundreds, possibly thousands of portals, through which people, animals, and objects of all kinds are drawn to the world, and leaving through any of them requires tech that's advanced and powerful enough to pass through them without breaking apart -- and unfortunately, the Grandmaster is the only one who possesses that technology. He built the world to work that way. People who wish to leave (not all do) can compete in the arena in the Contest of Champions, his favorite game, and if they win against his Champion (at the time of the film, the Hulk) they can leave. Presumably, he'll provide you a ship to do this. The trouble is, if he's feeling particularly attached to his Champion (or decides he'd like to keep you), he'll make sure the match is thrown if you get close to winning. As yet, nobody is known to have won their freedom.
"He's a lunatic, but he can be amenable" summed up the Grandmaster's personality perfectly when Loki was explaining the man to his brother. It's a fair summation to make when observing from the outside and trying to make sense of his behavior. It is not effective or accurate to write his behavior off as just "crazy," though it's probably fair to say that any person who has been alive for millions and millions of years may not be completely sane in a conventional sense. He is completely aware of what he is doing and displays on more than one occasion he's aware of how it affects other people; what he lacks is any reason to think the latter should have an affect on how he does things.
He kills and allows his followers to kill with only some discrimination when it comes to reasoning. (Interrupting him is not a capital offense, but losing or destroying a prize he covets, however pointless? You're dead, Jim.) His upbeat nature, or the way he intends to present it, means inconvenience means there's an upshot: he can blame somebody. Presumably, this puts a person in danger. People who earn his favor and therefore a place above the garbage and access to wealth, tech, power, parties, are his "friends," even his "cousins," his "Champions," etc, but failing when you've reached this status means you can still fall out of favor and doesn't bar you from demotion, if not execution.
Despite all of this, the Grandmaster has the potential for positive change. His "gaming" motivation can be worked around, as not every 'game' needs to involve killing or pulling in people who don't consent to play along. He is shown to be able to form relationships and seeming friendships, though most are centered around working relationships and jobs, or a mutual willingness to pass the time enjoyably. At the very least, he does seem to care about the Hulk as his Champion. Unlike most of the people on Sakkar -- who make a life there because they have no choice and take what enjoyment they can -- the story of being the universe's castaways, brought to Sakkar and its creator to love them and treasure them and give them purpose? Seems to be something the Hulk is extremely vulnerable to. Everything that he is, without Bruce Banner, is loved and celebrated and reinforced. The Hulk is loved for being the Hulk and is not feared. He is happy and his genuine happiness seems to make the Grandmaster very happy, himself. One could only imagine how much more it would feed him if the majority of his citizens felt as actualized and fulfilled. It's possible there were others on Sakkar, like Topaz (his bodyguard) who were of a similar mind. That's something that could be fostered by the right people.
Barge Reactions: While the Grandmaster will ignore the purpose of the Barge right up until someone's smart enough to gamify it for him, he is actually going to mostly love the place. There's a lack of working staff here, of course, and that's a problem, but opportunity around every corner and a rich, semi-deverse population. (Sakkar was more diverse; lotta straight-up humanoids around here, Admiral, and you should live a little and get some lobster people up in here or something.) Most of the floods, he'll love, because change and surprise interest him. Breaches that make him another person might be more unsettling, and whether he will reflect on this or just pretend it didn't happen depends entirely upon what happens in the breach in question. He is not likely to be afraid when threatened by especially dangerous Inmates or Wardens, save from like -- a casual observer's POV, like he's watching a movie. Everyone should seem interesting to him until they prove otherwise. You will always have potential. He will also never get a job. Attempts to suggest, command, or persuade him to look into getting a job will render him incapable of comprehending what you are saying, whether written or spoken, and attempts to strongarm him into it by taking things away from him will always be framed as you being mean for absolutely no reason.
Path to Redemption: The Grandmaster values actual lives about as much as a person is capable of valuing the lives of NPCs in a video game, which means that sometimes caring about you getting hurt or dying involves calling for a round of applause for being a good sport or expiring in an especially interesting way. He views people as only as important as they are useful or enriching for him, in most cases. A Warden's job will largely be to do their best to encourage him to form stronger, more meaningful relationships with other people and to place people, in general, at a higher value. He has shown that using his influence to actually fulfill and validate people may have a positive effect on him just as much as them, so this may be a good place to start.
Just. Keep an eye on the way he socializes, especially if his alliances look like they might reinforce his bad behaviors.
His fixation on games will not go away because it's literally what keeps him alive. If your approach to him is to convince him to give it up and functionally allow him to become vulnerable and age and die, you will never get anywhere. If you want to encourage new behaviors, you may be wise to use the gimmick.
A patient hand is needed, but for the most part you can take comfort in knowing that he knows you're trying and may even encourage you, but that doesn't mean he's actively changing. He's very good at projecting an image and appearing to live by it in shallow ways (like his dislike of the word "slave" when referring to the people he keeps prisoner to fight in the arena -- he prefers "prisoners with jobs" but this division of terms seems to be more amusing and an image for the masses than a moral policy). So you have to stay on him to follow through and challenge him to think when he'd rather have fun.
Deal: N/A
History: His history as shown in the wikia article. The movie ends with the uprising on Sakkar over, with him being found by the remaining revolutionaries, and he declares the revolution a "tie" and congratulates everyone, including himself, because you can't have an uprising without someone to rise up against. It is left open what happened from there, but again, I'm running on the notion that nobody knows he can actually defend himself. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say things probably returned to the way they were, sans his Champion and a few known minions. When the 'snap' came in Infinity War, he was at home minding his own business.
Sample Journal Entry: Link to Test Drive Meme
Sample RP: It took an embarrassingly long time for the Grandmaster to realize he had changed. He felt the turbulence in the early hours of the morning, only slightly stirred in his repose. It was only when he dressed, preparing to emerge to the Inmate baths, that he thought that his robe felt different on him, didn't quite fit. Which was an understatement, because the sleeves went far beyond the actual length of his arms. Should have been impossible; he took a number of things from the communal wardrobe but this was tailored.
The face he saw in the mirror, he realized when he went to look, was so much younger than he could remember being, that he did not initially believe it was his own face at all. If it weren't for the smudge of his eye makeup still present or the marred blue mark on his chin, it would be plausibly deniable.
But no. There was not a line to his face, which he actually somewhat disliked. His fingers, small and short touched a cheek with actual baby fat, even a little lighter in pallor, and ran through a shock of mussed blue-black hair with not an ounce of his beloved silver.
Curious.
He nodded to himself.
Worth taking a closer look and testing.
He glanced back the way he had come and sighed at the form still slumbering in his bed, recognizing that while he normally would have felt some fleeting desire to revisit or even just look back on a night of revelry with fondness, he was bored and unmoved and frankly feeling a little intruded upon.
That was more unusual than the transformation.
Turbulence. They had said something about that.
He wrapped his robe around himself a little tighter and tied it off, running a comb (grabbed through the cloth of his sleeves) through his hair to make himself just a little more presentable, and then he traipsed back to his not-yet-empty bed. He grasped the blankets and sheets and dragged them off with more strength than he should have had at this size, if he weren't who he was.
His visitor sputtered awake, confused.
"Wake up and get out; this isn't legal or interesting anymore."
Special Notes: N/A
Powers Section Revision:
The one major tweak that MCU seems to have made to this is that the Collector and the Grandmaster's powers are implied to be linked to their respective worlds: Knowhere and Sakkar. This would make sense -- one is where the Collector keeps his collection, his reason for living, and the other is the world the Grandmaster built, seemingly to provide him with an endless supply of players and an interesting board for them to play on -- with all its time-fuckery and reality bending hinted to be the reason he looks the way he does despite being millions upon millions of years old.
The Grandmaster is completely nerfed on the Barge. While he may start physically at slightly above average in terms of strength, speed, and durability in strictly human terms, he leads a near-sedentary lifestyle and this may begin to wane quickly.
In terms of skills and abilities that are not supernatural, it is fair to say that millions of years to expose oneself to new experiences has opened him up to some advanced skill sets. He can acclimate to new technology, tools, etc fairly quickly if they share similar applications to something he's experienced before. He'll be like this about things like musical instruments as well (he's shown to be able to play the keyboard/synthesizer or some form of one in the movie and would probably figure a piano out pretty quick). It's just a matter of having had a lot of free time to fiddle around. Unfortunately, can doesn't always mean will and it's fair to assume opportunities to hone his abilities may have been squandered at times in favor of easier pleasures. His sense of hearing, taste, touch, and sight are also said to learn toward advanced levels, but not to an unusual extreme. He's had millions of years to develop his senses and skills -- noticing more small details by sight, hearing more subtle shifts in tone and environment, having a discerning palate, etc.