Booker DeWitt (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amonglions) wrote2013-07-03 12:05 am
amonglions) wrote2013-07-03 12:05 am
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luceti app
PLAYER
Name: Kim
Journal Username:solasbeag
E-mail: crazyjumpinbean@gmail.com
AIM/PLURK: kujoismydog @ AIM /![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
cupcakepantry
Current Characters at Luceti:
Cato -deadalready
CHARACTER
Name: Booker DeWitt
Canon: Bioshock Infinite
Gender: Male
Age: 38
Wing Color: Brown spattered with dark red at the tips
Canon Point: **SPOILERS**
The end of the last sequence of the game where Booker is voluntarily drowned by Elizabeth. Instead of being rebooted to the beginning of everything (before he sold his daughter to Comstock) he’ll be sent to Luceti.
Canon Point Explanation: This is the technical end of the game for Booker, the point where he effectively erases all other outcomes thought up thus far with his own death. It makes it so the man who became Comstock was never baptised and Columbia never happened as a result. It takes Booker back to square one where he can have a life with his daughter instead of selling her to pay off his debts. I will be taking him from the actual point of death on his part (or loss of consciousness) I just wanted to clarify.
History: Here
Personality:
Booker DeWitt doesn't hate anything half as much as he hates himself.
Haunted by what he’s done in the past, his demons are a major definer of his psyche. He started a career of violence at the young age of sixteen when he joined the Army and the 7th Cavalry at the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29th. According to a Voxophone left by Comstock (before the baptism, so before the timelines split into different Bookers) he was accused of having Native American blood in his family tree by his sergeant. In response Booker slaughters many Sioux people, burns women and children in their homes and takes the scalps of the men he kills. This earns him the moniker of ‘White Injun’ and, strangely enough, the respect of the men in his regiment along with the nickname. But at much too high a cost; Booker sacrifices his humanity in exchange for what is, in the end, short-lived respect.
Booker looks back on this time in his life with passive disgust and anger. It is clear he still has a conscience under the horrible things he’s done but Booker will never see himself as a person of worth or good ever again. He lives with his guilt as if it’s something he deserves, and yet, does not let it stop him from continuing to live. At some point he meets his future wife and they’re together for a period of time before she becomes pregnant with Anna, their future daughter. Unfortunately when her mother was giving birth, she died and left Booker, an eighteen year old alcoholic with horrible issues and a newborn, alone. Being a young father and a single parent at that only made Booker drink more and gamble more to ignore his problems until he couldn't afford to support a child and himself.
Thinking in half-measures, Booker took up an offer from a stranger to buy his child and fix his gambling debts in return. He takes the offer hesitantly, thinking more of himself than the defenseless child he wanted to be rid of. The instant the strange man takes her away from him though - Booker has a moment of clarity that drives him to pursue the man. When he finds them in an alleyway, disappearing through some kind of hole in the wall, Booker frantically attempts to take his daughter away from the man. Alas, it is too late and Anna DeWitt vanishes with only the small digit of her pinky finger left as evidence that she ever existed. As if Booker hadn't already hit bottom, he goes deeper and deeper into his cups.
In a fit of extreme guilt and anger he brands himself with her initials ‘A.D’ to ensure he never forgets what he has done. He wants to have a constant reminder of his failure to take his daughter back from the men that bought her. Booker makes a valiant effort to try and track down the people he sold his daughter to throughout the years but eventually gives up when he finds there is literally no trace of her to be found. He joins the Pinkerton Detective Agency shortly after this, where his job was to, as Elizabeth so delicately put it, to “hurt people”. In truth his occupation was to dismantle worker strikes against factories. After being so disturbed by his actions at Wounded Knee, why would he enter a career path obviously rife with violence? Veterans, trained only in brutality, often took up arms in mercenary groups. Booker's decision to join the Pinkerton Agency would have been a fairly common decision among historical men in his position. His license as a Pinkerton Agent was eventually revoked and he was stripped of his title for “behavior too violent”. He becomes a Private Investigator afterwards and goes on to continue his pattern of violence and drink until a familiar man appears to him and offers to help him find his daughter and bring her back. Booker leaps at being given an opportunity to find his daughter once more, hoping to save her from the man who took her twenty years ago. Unfortunately, going through the tear wipes his memory of all of this and turns a deeply personal mission into a job that could wipe away an imaginary debt.
Booker’s morality teeters wildly on a precarious line. He will kill without hesitation, but feel awful disgust at the exploitation of people. He can both admire Daisy Fitzroy and find her just as terrible as Comstock in her methods of rebellion. It’s only when he truly starts to become invested in Elizabeth as a person instead of an assignment that he shows concern for his charge and a fierce desire to see no harm come to her ever again. What started as a simple job to clear his slate turns into a vendetta to see Elizabeth’s life made right.
Booker doesn't allow his past grievances to own him, but they do define a large part of his character. He doesn't let anyone, not even Elizabeth, try to tell him he had reasons or was young. The way he sees it: he did things and he regrets them but that doesn't ever take them away. Booker’s moral center, however shredded it may be, prevents him from believing he deserves redemption or ‘saving’. In the beginning of the game, Booker enters the lighthouse that will take him to Columbia and finds a basin of water with the slogan above it reading: ‘Of thy sins, shall I wash thee.’ He takes one look into the water before scoffing and turning away.
Booker tells Elizabeth at one point in the game when she’s realizing the scope of what they've done:
As much as Booker talks a good talk about simply living with the fact that he’s done horrible, unforgivable things, he doesn't exactly walk the walk to go with it. He’s a perpetual drinker and does so to avoid his guilt over the events of Wounded Knee. At first it is solely that but the list builds quickly: his dead wife, selling Anna, working for the Pinkertons...each act in his life that changes him leaves a scar that he will soak in alcohol to avoid acknowledging it. Booker mistakes bottling things up with compartmentalizing, and this has incredibly negative effects on him at a subconscious level.
Booker has a very personal final encounter with Comstock towards the end of the game. Booker becomes enraged when Comstock blames Elizabeth’s missing joint of her pinky on him and tells her to ask Booker about it, accusing him of being responsible. This sends him into a blind rage and he smashes Comstock’s head repeatedly against the edge of a fountain screaming:
before he finally drowns the man.
He doesn't realize even after having done it why he did it, with his mind in disarray the deep-seated anger towards himself only occurs out of the remnants of the guilt he harbored for twenty years after having sold Anna and manifests in the murder of Comstock.
Beneath being a deeply troubled and angry individual, Booker’s sense of humor extends to sarcasm and irony. As you may expect, he’s also very cynical person. At one point in the game he darkly remarks that the world needs more people like Daisy Fitzroy because of people like him.
To further dismantle the idea of the tormented bad-ass that Booker comes off as, he is incredibly awkward in more social situations versus the action of battle. He stammers and responds hesitantly to anyone who acts normal around him (friendly). This is a consistent problem Booker has throughout Columbia where the people are overly chipper and polite in manner. In fact it seems the only time he’s sure of himself is when he’s in the middle of a fight or having a tense conversation. Anything lighter and he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself.
Strengths
Physical:
Booker joined the military when he was sixteen and was part of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Wounded Knee, where he was well-remembered by others present for his gruesome tactics in battle and given the nickname ‘White Injun’ due to his habit of collecting scalps.
He went on to join the Pinkerton Detective Agency after his wife and daughter were taken out of his life and was employed to attack and murder union workers for protesting. Needless to say, he has a talent for gratuitous violence.
There is little finesse about his fighting, though. As a cavalryman Booker had no training, no knowledge of fighting beyond the practice of it. Still, he knows how to handle a weapon and sky-hook with remarkable skill.
Upon entering Columbia and visiting the fair before the raffle, Booker ingests something called a ‘Vigor’. Vigors are a patented, widely distributed substance produced by Fink Industries that allow the users to perform tasks both daily and extraordinary with ease. Of course, like the plasmids in the original Bioshock, they have more deadly applications as well.
Vigors are incredibly powerful yet incredibly dependent on their only fuel source: Salts. Salts are ingestible potions that power your Vigors and allow you to use them. Different Vigors will use more Salts than others and others require a constant charge from the Salts to be used. At Booker’s point in canon, he can have access to all of them - however three of the eight are ‘optional’ (not central to the game’s main plot) and thus Booker will only have access to the five central Vigors he uses practically in game to move the plot forward.
These Vigors are as follows:
Possession -
Devil’s Kiss
Murder of Crows
Shock Jockey
Bucking Bronco
Again, none of the upgrades will be available to Booker in Luceti and his Salt intake will be as it would be during the start of the game before he takes the tonics to increase the Salt bar. Use of the Vigors will depend entirely on Salts and whether or not they are available to him in Luceti. I would like to app him in with a full Salts bar - allowing him limited but potential use of his Vigors should he need to. Powers affiliated with the Vigors can be downgraded further if necessary.
Mental:
Booker is faced with insurmountable odds when entering Columbia. When the brand on his hand identifies him as the heavily anticipated and feared False Shepherd, it seems the entire city of Columbia rears it’s collective head in an attempt to drive him from their streets. Police officers, firemen, and the mourners of Lady Comstock all are average enemy groups Booker faces in the great chase through Columbia. Jeremiah Fink’s creation, the Handyman is a terrifying opponent as well as the Motorized Patriots that Comstock unleashes upon you. The Vox Populi are also gunning for Booker, and have their own Patriots and Handymen that they have absconded with.
On top of all this, Booker and Elizabeth are being pursued by an automaton creature called Songbird whose only motivation is to take Elizabeth back and eliminate Booker.
Booker has many opportunities, on top of all of these enemies, to turn back or to change his course of action. Unfortunately circumstances take these right out from under him. Nevertheless, he preservers even in the face of his own death. Toward the end of the game Booker is told the truth of the matter: that he is Comstock. Instead of meeting his necessary death with fear, he meets it with acceptance. This is a man who is adaptable and has learned to work around things like fear and confusion.
Emotional:
Booker does well to compartmentalize his issues, but goes overboard in the long run towards avoidance. Still, this is a strength of his. Towards the end of the game, when the stakes are being raised, Booker is met with incredibly difficult truths. Elizabeth asks him to kill her if Songbird ever attempts to take her back to her tower, the idea that he might have something to do with Elizabeth’s current situation shakes Booker something fierce, the slow realization that he isn’t...remembering all that he should.
These things make Booker uneasy and shake his foundation but he files them away when they become problems or irrelevant to their current life or death scenario. He focuses on the situation at hand instead of what he’s thinking or what Elizabeth is thinking.
At the end of the game, Booker is faced with a choice that would make most turn back or attempt to find another way around but his resolve to right things and help Elizabeth motivate him to go through with an honorable sacrifice.
The more Elizabeth and Booker delve into his past, the more it becomes clear that he and Comstock are connected. In fact, they are the same man who have made different choices. After the events of Wounded Knee, Booker attends a baptism in a river - driven by guilt and wanting repentance for his sins. The Booker we know; the alcoholic brute, decided at the last minute that a dunk in the river couldn't change the things he did and he walked away. The Booker that became Comstock went through with it, became a new man with the baptism and went on to approach Congress with his idea of Columbia. The rest is history, as they say.
Elizabeth and Booker discover that the only way they can truly rid the millions upon millions of universes of Comstock is to, as Booker puts it, ‘smother the bastard in his crib’. He thinks, at first, this simply means killing a child. What he doesn't realize is that he and Comstock are the same man and so they must go back into his own past to allow Elizabeth to get rid of Comstock. And so they drown him. Booker’s resolve to do the right thing for Elizabeth to be truly free of Comstock overrules his basic desire to live. At no point are we given a hint that Booker could potentially be suicidal or actually yearn for death. Certainly, as a soldier he may welcome it but he does not seek it. When Elizabeth pushes him under the water, Booker does his utmost not to struggle - to just simply let go.
Weaknesses
Physical:
Booker is, at the end of the day, human. The Vigors do not provide him with any supernatural resistance to bullets or falls from great heights. At one point, Booker can be stabbed in the hand by a spy of Comstock’s and the wound stays with him for the rest of the game. He is just as susceptible to death as the rest of us.
Mental:
Booker DeWitt carries the heavy burden knowing of his past grievances against humanity and still managing to have a conscience after everything he’s done. His guilt runs to such extremes that it drives him to heavily drink and gamble in attempts to distract himself from it. After his wife passes, Booker sells his daughter in return for having all his gambling debts paid off - the regret that stems from this drives him to brand his hand with her initials in remembrance of his horrible mistake and forces him to attempt to track down the people he sold her to. He gives up, after years and years of searching, and instead turns back to drink and wallowing in his mistakes.
Booker never lets himself forget the horrible things he’s done and he doesn't forgive himself for them either. His guilt defines him as a person, making him a solemn and harsh man. He only starts to think there may be a chance for redemption after meeting Elizabeth.
Booker suffers from heavy P.T.S.D after the events of Wounded Knee, it runs to such an extent that he turns to drink to placate his mind. Booker also turns to gambling at some point in his life after Wounded Knee. After his wife dies, he continues to drink and gamble, though we do not know the sole reason behind his addiction to gambling it is most likely that he turned to it when he realized he was losing too much money from his alcohol consumption. Gambling would have provided an easy out but it only drove him to the bottom that much quicker.
His drinking and gambling habits are the catalyst by which he is forced to sell Anna in favor of having one less mouth to feed and loses her. He regrets this choice instantly, but like any addiction, he does not break them after she disappears from his life. It continues to be a severe problem for Booker from that day to when we see him.
Emotional:
Booker absolutely hates himself, and with very good reason. He has killed many people without discrimination and did so at a very young age. From there he continued on a violent career path and did things that even he found repulsive while working for the Pinkerton Agency, though he never goes into detail about what those things are we can assume they’re ghastly due to the previously stated nature of his person and the reputation of the Pinkerton agents at that time in history.
We must also remember he sold his daughter for a clean slate - though instantly showed regret for it and even tried to renege on the deal he made (going so far as to try and pull Anna from Comstock’s arms as he took her through a tear, which caused the loss of part of her finger). Booker understands what he did was wrong and that the things in his past can absolutely not be forgiven. So he does not forgive himself. Booker DeWitt doesn't give himself an inch when it comes to the goodness of his character, which he does indeed possess! He just doesn't want to see it because he doesn't believe he deserves that redeeming quality.
Anything else?: Due to the fact that Bioshock Infinite is a first person shooter, there aren’t many pictures of Booker DeWitt in canon (or fandom) and therefore aren't a lot of icons for me to use. I would like to - as well as using canon icons - use Matthew Davis as a PB for Booker DeWitt.
SAMPLES
First Person: Test Flight meme!
Third Person:
Booker had made it very clear he wasn't interested in doing missions before. Said he was done working for people who needed others to do their dirty-work and didn’t want to play that game anymore. Especially with Elizabeth here. He’d made a promise to her that the the trail of dead bodies stopped when he arrived here - that he’d treat Luceti like a second chance and make an effort to live a normal life. After Columbia and the shitshow that it was, Booker thought that peace and quiet sounded really nice. It was what Elizabeth deserved and it was more than a second chance to him in the beginning.
Except the longer Booker did things at the same pace as everyone else, the quicker he came to the realization that he couldn't. He wasn't equipped to spend days, weeks at a time without doing anything that he could find really engaging. It was a bitter realization that he'd had many times before: he was good at violence.
He wanted to try, honestly! Wanted to be better for Elizabeth...but as he sat in the Good Spirits bar and stared at the beer he was occupying his time with, Booker asked himself a question. Did he want to change just because of Elizabeth, or did he want to change because he thought she would want it.
A lot of his decisions revolved around Elizabeth now. It had taken a while for him to figure it out but they always had in some way. For better or for worse.
When he signed up for his first mission, Booker knew he wasn't going to be doing any changing any time soon. Why bother when this was what he was good at? It was how he could be useful; damn anyone telling him otherwise. He wasn't made for anything else. Not like this, as much as he hated to admit it.
Name: Kim
Journal Username:
solasbeagE-mail: crazyjumpinbean@gmail.com
AIM/PLURK: kujoismydog @ AIM /
Current Characters at Luceti:
Cato -
deadalreadyCHARACTER
Name: Booker DeWitt
Canon: Bioshock Infinite
Gender: Male
Age: 38
Wing Color: Brown spattered with dark red at the tips
Canon Point: **SPOILERS**
The end of the last sequence of the game where Booker is voluntarily drowned by Elizabeth. Instead of being rebooted to the beginning of everything (before he sold his daughter to Comstock) he’ll be sent to Luceti.
Canon Point Explanation: This is the technical end of the game for Booker, the point where he effectively erases all other outcomes thought up thus far with his own death. It makes it so the man who became Comstock was never baptised and Columbia never happened as a result. It takes Booker back to square one where he can have a life with his daughter instead of selling her to pay off his debts. I will be taking him from the actual point of death on his part (or loss of consciousness) I just wanted to clarify.
History: Here
Personality:
Booker DeWitt doesn't hate anything half as much as he hates himself.
Haunted by what he’s done in the past, his demons are a major definer of his psyche. He started a career of violence at the young age of sixteen when he joined the Army and the 7th Cavalry at the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29th. According to a Voxophone left by Comstock (before the baptism, so before the timelines split into different Bookers) he was accused of having Native American blood in his family tree by his sergeant. In response Booker slaughters many Sioux people, burns women and children in their homes and takes the scalps of the men he kills. This earns him the moniker of ‘White Injun’ and, strangely enough, the respect of the men in his regiment along with the nickname. But at much too high a cost; Booker sacrifices his humanity in exchange for what is, in the end, short-lived respect.
Booker looks back on this time in his life with passive disgust and anger. It is clear he still has a conscience under the horrible things he’s done but Booker will never see himself as a person of worth or good ever again. He lives with his guilt as if it’s something he deserves, and yet, does not let it stop him from continuing to live. At some point he meets his future wife and they’re together for a period of time before she becomes pregnant with Anna, their future daughter. Unfortunately when her mother was giving birth, she died and left Booker, an eighteen year old alcoholic with horrible issues and a newborn, alone. Being a young father and a single parent at that only made Booker drink more and gamble more to ignore his problems until he couldn't afford to support a child and himself.
Thinking in half-measures, Booker took up an offer from a stranger to buy his child and fix his gambling debts in return. He takes the offer hesitantly, thinking more of himself than the defenseless child he wanted to be rid of. The instant the strange man takes her away from him though - Booker has a moment of clarity that drives him to pursue the man. When he finds them in an alleyway, disappearing through some kind of hole in the wall, Booker frantically attempts to take his daughter away from the man. Alas, it is too late and Anna DeWitt vanishes with only the small digit of her pinky finger left as evidence that she ever existed. As if Booker hadn't already hit bottom, he goes deeper and deeper into his cups.
In a fit of extreme guilt and anger he brands himself with her initials ‘A.D’ to ensure he never forgets what he has done. He wants to have a constant reminder of his failure to take his daughter back from the men that bought her. Booker makes a valiant effort to try and track down the people he sold his daughter to throughout the years but eventually gives up when he finds there is literally no trace of her to be found. He joins the Pinkerton Detective Agency shortly after this, where his job was to, as Elizabeth so delicately put it, to “hurt people”. In truth his occupation was to dismantle worker strikes against factories. After being so disturbed by his actions at Wounded Knee, why would he enter a career path obviously rife with violence? Veterans, trained only in brutality, often took up arms in mercenary groups. Booker's decision to join the Pinkerton Agency would have been a fairly common decision among historical men in his position. His license as a Pinkerton Agent was eventually revoked and he was stripped of his title for “behavior too violent”. He becomes a Private Investigator afterwards and goes on to continue his pattern of violence and drink until a familiar man appears to him and offers to help him find his daughter and bring her back. Booker leaps at being given an opportunity to find his daughter once more, hoping to save her from the man who took her twenty years ago. Unfortunately, going through the tear wipes his memory of all of this and turns a deeply personal mission into a job that could wipe away an imaginary debt.
Booker’s morality teeters wildly on a precarious line. He will kill without hesitation, but feel awful disgust at the exploitation of people. He can both admire Daisy Fitzroy and find her just as terrible as Comstock in her methods of rebellion. It’s only when he truly starts to become invested in Elizabeth as a person instead of an assignment that he shows concern for his charge and a fierce desire to see no harm come to her ever again. What started as a simple job to clear his slate turns into a vendetta to see Elizabeth’s life made right.
Booker doesn't allow his past grievances to own him, but they do define a large part of his character. He doesn't let anyone, not even Elizabeth, try to tell him he had reasons or was young. The way he sees it: he did things and he regrets them but that doesn't ever take them away. Booker’s moral center, however shredded it may be, prevents him from believing he deserves redemption or ‘saving’. In the beginning of the game, Booker enters the lighthouse that will take him to Columbia and finds a basin of water with the slogan above it reading: ‘Of thy sins, shall I wash thee.’ He takes one look into the water before scoffing and turning away.
Booker tells Elizabeth at one point in the game when she’s realizing the scope of what they've done:
“You don’t [wash away what you've done]. You just learn to live with it.”
As much as Booker talks a good talk about simply living with the fact that he’s done horrible, unforgivable things, he doesn't exactly walk the walk to go with it. He’s a perpetual drinker and does so to avoid his guilt over the events of Wounded Knee. At first it is solely that but the list builds quickly: his dead wife, selling Anna, working for the Pinkertons...each act in his life that changes him leaves a scar that he will soak in alcohol to avoid acknowledging it. Booker mistakes bottling things up with compartmentalizing, and this has incredibly negative effects on him at a subconscious level.
Booker has a very personal final encounter with Comstock towards the end of the game. Booker becomes enraged when Comstock blames Elizabeth’s missing joint of her pinky on him and tells her to ask Booker about it, accusing him of being responsible. This sends him into a blind rage and he smashes Comstock’s head repeatedly against the edge of a fountain screaming:
“She's your daughter, you son of a bitch! And you abandoned her! Was it worth it? Huh? Did you get what you wanted? Tell me! Tell me!”
before he finally drowns the man.
He doesn't realize even after having done it why he did it, with his mind in disarray the deep-seated anger towards himself only occurs out of the remnants of the guilt he harbored for twenty years after having sold Anna and manifests in the murder of Comstock.
Beneath being a deeply troubled and angry individual, Booker’s sense of humor extends to sarcasm and irony. As you may expect, he’s also very cynical person. At one point in the game he darkly remarks that the world needs more people like Daisy Fitzroy because of people like him.
To further dismantle the idea of the tormented bad-ass that Booker comes off as, he is incredibly awkward in more social situations versus the action of battle. He stammers and responds hesitantly to anyone who acts normal around him (friendly). This is a consistent problem Booker has throughout Columbia where the people are overly chipper and polite in manner. In fact it seems the only time he’s sure of himself is when he’s in the middle of a fight or having a tense conversation. Anything lighter and he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself.
Strengths
Booker joined the military when he was sixteen and was part of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Wounded Knee, where he was well-remembered by others present for his gruesome tactics in battle and given the nickname ‘White Injun’ due to his habit of collecting scalps.
He went on to join the Pinkerton Detective Agency after his wife and daughter were taken out of his life and was employed to attack and murder union workers for protesting. Needless to say, he has a talent for gratuitous violence.
There is little finesse about his fighting, though. As a cavalryman Booker had no training, no knowledge of fighting beyond the practice of it. Still, he knows how to handle a weapon and sky-hook with remarkable skill.
Upon entering Columbia and visiting the fair before the raffle, Booker ingests something called a ‘Vigor’. Vigors are a patented, widely distributed substance produced by Fink Industries that allow the users to perform tasks both daily and extraordinary with ease. Of course, like the plasmids in the original Bioshock, they have more deadly applications as well.
Vigors are incredibly powerful yet incredibly dependent on their only fuel source: Salts. Salts are ingestible potions that power your Vigors and allow you to use them. Different Vigors will use more Salts than others and others require a constant charge from the Salts to be used. At Booker’s point in canon, he can have access to all of them - however three of the eight are ‘optional’ (not central to the game’s main plot) and thus Booker will only have access to the five central Vigors he uses practically in game to move the plot forward.
These Vigors are as follows:
Possession -
The first Vigor Booker takes; this initially allows him to turn machines to his side. In game, he must use it to get past an inaccessible part of the level. It is the Vigor that consumes the most Salts initially. One use of the Vigor uses up half of the Salts available, this problem can be resolved by buying an upgrade.
This Vigor manifests itself in the form of a ghostly green young woman flying from her caster’s hand and into whatever it is intended to be cast upon. When it is being equipped, Booker’s hand takes on the same ghostly green glow of the woman it manifests as.
Things like turrets that would normally attack Booker on sight would instead shoot his enemies, other mechanical contraptions such as vending machines can be bent to his will to release coins. Later on in the game, Booker acquires an upgrade that allows him to use less Salts, and another to allow him possession of enemies and to set traps for enemies to walk into and be turned to his side. This upgrade has gruesome after-effects for the enemies it is used on, instead of the possession merely wearing off the victim suffers some kind of identity break where they still think of themselves as the enemy and commit suicide with whatever weapon they happen to be holding.
In game, I would like to request that the Possession Vigor be applied to both machine and people but for the Salt use to be as great as it was when initially ingested. The ability to create traps with any Vigor will be negated from any in game application of the Vigors.
Devil’s Kiss
Booker acquires this Vigor shortly after taking the Possession Vigor. A fireman attacks him on the next section of the level; a class of enemy that uses the Devil’s Kiss Vigor solely. They are also immune to the fire thanks to the suits they wear. Booker is unfortunately, just as sensitive to the fire of Devil’s Kiss as his enemies and can lose health if hit by a shockwave from his own attack.
When in use, this Vigor appears to burn and melt away Booker’s hand, his bones are visible and charred. The first time Booker ingests a Vigor he experiences horrific bodily hallucinations - it is unclear if he can feel the pain of whatever is occurring or if he is simply reacting to the sight of his flesh melting from his skin. It does not have any lasting effects upon him after use.
Devil’s Kiss allows Booker to throw balls of molten fire that act as grenades, upon impact with the enemy or ground they explode in mini-infernos. In combat, it can be thrown at puddles of spent oil and used to ignite them and anyone near. It’s very effective with crowd control. Traps can be set with Devil’s Kiss without any upgrades needed. Enemies that have Devil’s Kiss used on them will be stunned for a period of time, while enemies killed while having Devil’s Kiss still in effect will turn to ash.
The upgrades that can be bought for Devil’s Kiss are slight, only creating mini-clusters in the grenade or allowing for increased damage when cast. In continuation with the Possession Vigor, none of the upgrades will be available to Booker in game. The amount of Salts used for a basic cast is 23% while a trap takes 46%.
Murder of Crows
Murder of Crows is taken off the corpse of a Zealot of the Lady, one of the mourning devotees of the late Lady Comstock. The Zealots are a enemy class Booker faces infrequently that have mastered the use of Murder of Crows, much like the Fireman’s mastery of Devil’s Kiss they are immune to the Vigor itself. When the Zealots use Murder of Crows they can teleport in a swarm of crows or use them to strip the flesh from their intended victims while Booker can only use them to distract or stun enemies with pecking and clawing.
The Murder of Crows manifests itself as a swarm (or murder, hence the name) of crows flying and assaulting whomever it is cast upon. They typically only stun enemies, but can be combined with other Vigors for more deadly effects. When in use, Booker’s hand sprouts black feathers and his fingernails turn into long, hooked talons. It remains unclear if the Vigor effects upon his person are a hallucination or an actual real life side-effect.
Traps can be set with Murder of Crows before purchasing any upgrades. Upgrades allow the corpses of the victims of Murder of Crows to turn into Crows’ Traps without actually spending the Salt to set the traps individually. Another upgrade allows the damage to be increased. None of the upgrades will be allowed to Booker and the Salts necessary to use Murder of Crows will be as they are when first accessed. (28% per cast, 56% for traps)
Murder of Crows can be combined with any of the Vigors to create a double whammy effect. It works particularly well with Devil’s Kiss, where you can create flaming crows. It can also have the same effect when combined with Shock Jockey, where instead it creates a lightning storm with crows.
Shock Jockey
In order to advance in the story, Booker must find a vial of Shock Jockey in order to start a gondola to take Elizabeth and himself to an airship. There is no enemy class that uses Shock Jockey and the only enemy immune to it is the Siren, a ghost of Lady Comstock.
Shock Jockey allow Booker to manipulate electricity through charged crystals that manifest in the palms of his hand and act as conduits. He can also fling these crystals on the ground to have them act as traps or connect several in a row to create electric barriers. Shock Jockey takes the least of all Vigors as far as Salts are concerned, that being only 17% when cast and 32% for traps. Shock Jockey can also be used to power mechanical objects such as gondolas or to open doors that operate on a system that requires a blast of Shock Jockey.
Shock Jockey upgrades allow Booker to chain shocks from one enemy to another as opposed to setting traps off. This allows the user to conserve their Salt output greatly. Another upgrade allows for an increased stun duration from a single cast of Shock Jockey.
Like Devil’s Kiss, objects that already exist can be used to make Shock Jockey doubly effective. If there are puddles of water nearby, Booker can instead shock them to deliver a clustered shock to whomever may be standing or walking through it.
Bucking Bronco
Bucking Bronco is the only Vigor not manufactured by Fink, but instead by a man called Simon Pure. This Vigor is introduced to us early in the game, and is used on the tutorial level of using Vigors in a game at the fair. Bucking Bronco allows the user to suspend enemies in the air for a small duration of time. This renders them defenseless and allows the caster to either move onto another wave of enemies for a short time or to pick them out of the air one by one. It’s more practical application would be to hoist heavy things.
When in use, Booker’s hands crack and flake as if made of clay and reveal blood underneath the split skin. When cast, it shows a similar effect upon the ground where instead fire can be seen between the cracks in the Earth. Bucking Bronco uses the smallest amount of Salts in game, coming behind Shock Jockey at a close 15%. Traps use the same amount of Salts when cast. Bucking Bronco’s only upgrades increase the duration of float time and allow for a chain effect once cast.
Again, none of the upgrades will be available to Booker in Luceti and his Salt intake will be as it would be during the start of the game before he takes the tonics to increase the Salt bar. Use of the Vigors will depend entirely on Salts and whether or not they are available to him in Luceti. I would like to app him in with a full Salts bar - allowing him limited but potential use of his Vigors should he need to. Powers affiliated with the Vigors can be downgraded further if necessary.
Mental:
Booker is faced with insurmountable odds when entering Columbia. When the brand on his hand identifies him as the heavily anticipated and feared False Shepherd, it seems the entire city of Columbia rears it’s collective head in an attempt to drive him from their streets. Police officers, firemen, and the mourners of Lady Comstock all are average enemy groups Booker faces in the great chase through Columbia. Jeremiah Fink’s creation, the Handyman is a terrifying opponent as well as the Motorized Patriots that Comstock unleashes upon you. The Vox Populi are also gunning for Booker, and have their own Patriots and Handymen that they have absconded with.
On top of all this, Booker and Elizabeth are being pursued by an automaton creature called Songbird whose only motivation is to take Elizabeth back and eliminate Booker.
Booker has many opportunities, on top of all of these enemies, to turn back or to change his course of action. Unfortunately circumstances take these right out from under him. Nevertheless, he preservers even in the face of his own death. Toward the end of the game Booker is told the truth of the matter: that he is Comstock. Instead of meeting his necessary death with fear, he meets it with acceptance. This is a man who is adaptable and has learned to work around things like fear and confusion.
Emotional:
Booker does well to compartmentalize his issues, but goes overboard in the long run towards avoidance. Still, this is a strength of his. Towards the end of the game, when the stakes are being raised, Booker is met with incredibly difficult truths. Elizabeth asks him to kill her if Songbird ever attempts to take her back to her tower, the idea that he might have something to do with Elizabeth’s current situation shakes Booker something fierce, the slow realization that he isn’t...remembering all that he should.
These things make Booker uneasy and shake his foundation but he files them away when they become problems or irrelevant to their current life or death scenario. He focuses on the situation at hand instead of what he’s thinking or what Elizabeth is thinking.
At the end of the game, Booker is faced with a choice that would make most turn back or attempt to find another way around but his resolve to right things and help Elizabeth motivate him to go through with an honorable sacrifice.
The more Elizabeth and Booker delve into his past, the more it becomes clear that he and Comstock are connected. In fact, they are the same man who have made different choices. After the events of Wounded Knee, Booker attends a baptism in a river - driven by guilt and wanting repentance for his sins. The Booker we know; the alcoholic brute, decided at the last minute that a dunk in the river couldn't change the things he did and he walked away. The Booker that became Comstock went through with it, became a new man with the baptism and went on to approach Congress with his idea of Columbia. The rest is history, as they say.
Elizabeth and Booker discover that the only way they can truly rid the millions upon millions of universes of Comstock is to, as Booker puts it, ‘smother the bastard in his crib’. He thinks, at first, this simply means killing a child. What he doesn't realize is that he and Comstock are the same man and so they must go back into his own past to allow Elizabeth to get rid of Comstock. And so they drown him. Booker’s resolve to do the right thing for Elizabeth to be truly free of Comstock overrules his basic desire to live. At no point are we given a hint that Booker could potentially be suicidal or actually yearn for death. Certainly, as a soldier he may welcome it but he does not seek it. When Elizabeth pushes him under the water, Booker does his utmost not to struggle - to just simply let go.
Weaknesses
Booker is, at the end of the day, human. The Vigors do not provide him with any supernatural resistance to bullets or falls from great heights. At one point, Booker can be stabbed in the hand by a spy of Comstock’s and the wound stays with him for the rest of the game. He is just as susceptible to death as the rest of us.
Mental:
Booker DeWitt carries the heavy burden knowing of his past grievances against humanity and still managing to have a conscience after everything he’s done. His guilt runs to such extremes that it drives him to heavily drink and gamble in attempts to distract himself from it. After his wife passes, Booker sells his daughter in return for having all his gambling debts paid off - the regret that stems from this drives him to brand his hand with her initials in remembrance of his horrible mistake and forces him to attempt to track down the people he sold her to. He gives up, after years and years of searching, and instead turns back to drink and wallowing in his mistakes.
Booker never lets himself forget the horrible things he’s done and he doesn't forgive himself for them either. His guilt defines him as a person, making him a solemn and harsh man. He only starts to think there may be a chance for redemption after meeting Elizabeth.
Booker suffers from heavy P.T.S.D after the events of Wounded Knee, it runs to such an extent that he turns to drink to placate his mind. Booker also turns to gambling at some point in his life after Wounded Knee. After his wife dies, he continues to drink and gamble, though we do not know the sole reason behind his addiction to gambling it is most likely that he turned to it when he realized he was losing too much money from his alcohol consumption. Gambling would have provided an easy out but it only drove him to the bottom that much quicker.
His drinking and gambling habits are the catalyst by which he is forced to sell Anna in favor of having one less mouth to feed and loses her. He regrets this choice instantly, but like any addiction, he does not break them after she disappears from his life. It continues to be a severe problem for Booker from that day to when we see him.
Emotional:
Booker absolutely hates himself, and with very good reason. He has killed many people without discrimination and did so at a very young age. From there he continued on a violent career path and did things that even he found repulsive while working for the Pinkerton Agency, though he never goes into detail about what those things are we can assume they’re ghastly due to the previously stated nature of his person and the reputation of the Pinkerton agents at that time in history.
We must also remember he sold his daughter for a clean slate - though instantly showed regret for it and even tried to renege on the deal he made (going so far as to try and pull Anna from Comstock’s arms as he took her through a tear, which caused the loss of part of her finger). Booker understands what he did was wrong and that the things in his past can absolutely not be forgiven. So he does not forgive himself. Booker DeWitt doesn't give himself an inch when it comes to the goodness of his character, which he does indeed possess! He just doesn't want to see it because he doesn't believe he deserves that redeeming quality.
Anything else?: Due to the fact that Bioshock Infinite is a first person shooter, there aren’t many pictures of Booker DeWitt in canon (or fandom) and therefore aren't a lot of icons for me to use. I would like to - as well as using canon icons - use Matthew Davis as a PB for Booker DeWitt.
SAMPLES
First Person: Test Flight meme!
Third Person:
Booker had made it very clear he wasn't interested in doing missions before. Said he was done working for people who needed others to do their dirty-work and didn’t want to play that game anymore. Especially with Elizabeth here. He’d made a promise to her that the the trail of dead bodies stopped when he arrived here - that he’d treat Luceti like a second chance and make an effort to live a normal life. After Columbia and the shitshow that it was, Booker thought that peace and quiet sounded really nice. It was what Elizabeth deserved and it was more than a second chance to him in the beginning.
Except the longer Booker did things at the same pace as everyone else, the quicker he came to the realization that he couldn't. He wasn't equipped to spend days, weeks at a time without doing anything that he could find really engaging. It was a bitter realization that he'd had many times before: he was good at violence.
He wanted to try, honestly! Wanted to be better for Elizabeth...but as he sat in the Good Spirits bar and stared at the beer he was occupying his time with, Booker asked himself a question. Did he want to change just because of Elizabeth, or did he want to change because he thought she would want it.
A lot of his decisions revolved around Elizabeth now. It had taken a while for him to figure it out but they always had in some way. For better or for worse.
When he signed up for his first mission, Booker knew he wasn't going to be doing any changing any time soon. Why bother when this was what he was good at? It was how he could be useful; damn anyone telling him otherwise. He wasn't made for anything else. Not like this, as much as he hated to admit it.