[application]

[selfmadman]

IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Don Draper
Username: selfmadman
Fandom, Fandom AU, or OC: Mad Men. I'll be taking him from after the season six finale, “In Care Of.”
Played By: Renowned stage-scaler Jon Hamm.

Physical Description: Don is just over six feet tall and fairly muscular—he doesn’t quite have an athlete’s physique, but he’s in decent shape, especially for someone who drinks and smokes to excess. Now in his mid-forties, he’s starting to show signs of wear—he has some lines on his face and looks more haggard than he did five years ago (particularly after a late night). He keeps his dark hair slicked back, and though he shaves every morning it’s not long before there’s some stubble in evidence.



He typically dresses with fastidious care, professional but not flashy: shirts clean and starched, shoes polished, cufflinks in place. He prefers dark colors, greys and blues. When appropriate, he wears a fedora. In more casual environments he’ll dress accordingly—although they’re his standard attire, he has no sentimental attachment to suits.

Most of the time he projects an air of brusque self-assurance, but when he feels angry or threatened it often shows first in his posture—a sudden tension in his shoulders, the clench of his jaw.


History: I can finally link this!

Powers: Supernatural alcohol tolerance.

Talents/Abilities: Don is extremely good at what he does: he knows how to “manage people's expectations” of him, as he'd put it. Much of Don Draper is carefully crafted image—the successful businessman in the gray flannel suit, ready with his lighter when a lady needs it. He's a skilled liar who's very aware of how he presents himself. When he wants, he can be quite charming and persuasive. (When he doesn't, he can be a total and unrepentant dick.) He’s also a talented copywriter with an ear for language and a knack for divining what people want.

Perhaps surprisingly, Don's also adept at working with his hands. He can build and repair things (playhouses, leaky faucets, not his marriage) and gain a sense of how something's generally put together simply through repeated use. As someone who grew up on a farm, he knows how to handle a rifle and ride a horse (though he’s rusty at both) as well as perform all sorts of delightful menial tasks, many of them involving animal shit.

Thanks to his stint in the army he knows a thing or two about guns circa 1950—a thing or two he wouldn't mind forgetting.

Personality: A lot of Don's defining traits emerged as a result of his experiences in Korea—to his mind, when he traded dog tags with the dead Donald Draper, he left Dick Whitman, country bumpkin and boy who’d been shunned and beaten, behind and became a new person. Consequently, Don's focus is almost always on the present and moving forward—he lived for years as if everything could come crashing down at any moment (and perhaps it could have, although his assumption that he would be rejected by everyone he knew if it came to light that he stole a man's identity some fifteen years ago seems a touch extreme). He does his best not to rely on, much less confide in, others. For this reason, his circle of acquaintances doesn't extend far beyond those he works with—he doesn't understand the importance of maintaining relationships, investing the time to get to know someone and in turn allowing them to know him. His closest friend is Roger Sterling, with whom he has worked for over ten years, and while they're comfortable with each other and enjoy sharing drinks and jokes, Don would never trust Roger with his secrets or defend him out of loyalty.



In times of personal crisis, Don’s first instinct is—and likely always will be—to run. Twice he came only a hair’s breadth away from abandoning his home and family and embarking on an entirely new life: once when a coworker attempted to use the truth about Donald Draper as blackmail fodder, and during his prolonged stay in California after his wife Betty kicked him out of the house. During his time at Sterling Cooper, Don insisted he not be bound by a contract because he relished the freedom this afforded him. He’s prone to a restlessness that often gives rise to recklessness. It can take various forms: sleeping around, picking up hitchhikers and accepting drugs in return for the favor, turning over his bonus to his mistress so they can run away to Paris. Even when he seemed to have it all—the loving wife and children, the job, the car—Don was never fully comfortable with his life. He felt stifled, disconnected from the people he was meant to love more than anything. As he said to Anna, “I have been watching my life. It's right there. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can't.” Ironically, once he was divorced (and therefore free to pursue any number of vices), Don’s behavior became less adventurous, although no less reckless. Perhaps because he no longer had anything to run from, he was more inclined to drown his sorrows than attempt to outpace them.



If good intentions counted for everything, Don would be the world's greatest father, but in reality he's rarely there when his children need him. He loves them, treats them with care and affection, and desperately wants to do right by them (and avoid being anything like his own father), but the choice between getting a drink or three with Roger (or staying late at the office to put the finishing touches on a campaign) and spending time with his family is no choice at all. The divorce only complicates matters further—Don's eager to see his children, but at a loss when it comes to doing things with them. Sometimes they watch TV while he works; sometimes he leaves them with a sitter (or in the care of Megan, who's a natural with them) and goes out. He confesses to Megan that for a long time he feared he didn't have it in himself to love his children—that perhaps Archibald Whitman's casual cruelty had been beaten into him—and these insecurities doubtless contribute to his tendency to keep them at arm's length. That said, Don's surprisingly good at relating to and interacting with children when he bothers to do so—he's sensitive to Sally's fears and moods in a way Betty isn't, and more inclined to forgive mistakes or childish outbursts.



Despite his spotty educational record (he dropped out of high school and later “strung together a few non-consecutive years in night school”), Don is quite intelligent and always—well, usually; when you’re passed out drunk intellectual curiosity tends to fall by the wayside—looking to expand his knowledge of the world. He’s an aficionado of foreign films as well as movies in general, and while (as a glance at his bookshelf would attest) his forays into the world of literature are primarily business oriented, he does read novels and poetry when the mood strikes. Although very much an introvert, Don can’t help but be interested in (and fascinated by) other people’s desires—they are, after all, how he makes his living. His first question to a former lover upon discovering she’s become addicted to heroin is “What's it like?” Anyone with expertise or any sort of specialized knowledge intrigues him, too—he likes having an insider’s perspective on things.



Don has little time (or tolerance) for soul-searching or self-pity. He does not believe in sharing his feelings or the healing power of conversation and considers psychology a money grab at best. He’s contemptuous of self-promotion and those who indulge in it or actively seek acclaim—he values discretion and judges people by their actions rather than their words. Don tends to be laconic, even withdrawn—rare qualities in an ad man—but he’s not at all shy about speaking up (or administering a verbal thrashing) when the situation warrants or when a person or subject sparks his interest. He’s at his most eloquent when working and is capable of delivering masterful pitches that verge on the poetic.

SETTING SPECIFIC INFORMATION
Estate and descriptors: Calluses (I LEARNED HOW TO SPELL IT) (Exposure, Toil, Irreversible)

Reason for this Estate: Despite his polished appearance and matching set of manners, Don spent his formative years in the country—first on a farm, then, moving slightly closer to the outskirts of civilization, as a less-than-honored guest in a Pennsylvania whorehouse run by his “Uncle.” When he assumed a new identity, Don did his damnedest to make sure that nothing of the boy he used to be went into the man he would become, but all the denial in the world doesn't change the fact that for ten years he led a farmer's life. Calluses are a product of that life—a testament to one's hard work, instantly recognizable and almost impossible to conceal. On a darker note, they're something Don associates with his father, a foul-tempered drunk who never thought twice about laying hands on his son.

I wanted to give Don an Estate that harkened back to the past he's constantly running from. (I also wanted to make him cringe every time he had to tell someone what his Estate was.) While he'll by no means be happy with it, hopefully it'll encourage him to face—maybe even come to terms with? I don't want to get too crazy here—a part of himself he's always tried to deny.

Imperator and Code: Imperator Because a Razor of the Wild. Owing to a lot of issues with religion and more than a few with authority, it's safe to say that Don wouldn't react well to being chosen by any Imperator, but the Wild's less rigid structure will soften the blow somewhat. He'll be confused and angry (with Don the two tend to feed off each other) to start, wary of anything claiming to be divine and suspicious of the entire system of Nobles and Imperators. He will assume he's being manipulated in some as-yet-undiscovered way!

Once he settles in (and down), he'll...remain confused, since a Madison Avenue suit with a wife and three kids hardly seems like he'd be the Wild's top pick. And he won't be a seamless fit—he'll be able to respect the tenets of his Code, but Don's someone who, for practical reasons, has conditioned himself to conform to societal norms, to fulfill (at least superficially) people's expectations of him. He's leery of doing anything that would draw attention to himself. Hilariously, he'll have that same impulse with the Wild—he'll try to figure out how a typical Wildling should look and act, and it'll throw him for a loop when he realizes that there is no such thing as a typical Wildling and he can't use conformity as a kind of protective coloration. Ideally, this'll nudge him toward being truer to himself and his instincts—although he is a pretty shitty person who can have pretty terrible instincts!—and less concerned with how other people see him.

Don would make an attempt—not necessarily a sincere one, but an attempt—to abide by whichever Code selected him, but privately he would seethe at being forced into a hierarchy of godly beings. He'd chafe at being made to extol principles deemed higher than his own (never mind that Don's own principles are few and far between). Because the Wild values freedom and choice above all, Don will be less resentful (and perhaps less mistrustful) of it than he would be of other Codes. Having been kidnapped and whisked away to a world nothing like his own, he'll feel trapped, but since he'll be in the company of individuals with similar sentiments, it'll rankle slightly less.

Finally, Don'll be curious about the nature and history of the Wild and its relationship to the other Codes. Yes, he will essentially be trying to fathom the unfathomable, but it's good to have hobbies. Maybe he'll glean a thing or two along the way.

Reason for playing: One of the central questions of Mad Men is “Can people change?” The interesting thing about Locust Court—and Don in the context of the game—is that from the outset the characters are changed: they're granted new, frightening, and in Don's case unprecedented power. Using that as a starting point, I'd like to explore Don's capacity for change (while at the same time, by giving him an Estate connected to his past, encouraging him to confront those aspects of his life that are unalterable). Between his Estate and his Code, there are a lot of tensions at play, and he could end up being pulled in a number of directions.

And I just plain like the setting: the premise, the NPCs, the world, the mods. I'm excited to join a game where characters' actions will shape the environment and have actual consequences, positive and negative. I'm ready to be surprised, intrigued, and thwarted by rolls of the dice. (But not delighted. Please don't do that to me.)