(Paladin) Danse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
androidvictoriam) wrote2026-04-23 10:13 pm
androidvictoriam) wrote2026-04-23 10:13 pm
Cyndane Application
APPLICATION
Player Name: Anna
Player is over 18?: Yes
Player Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
layonmacduff, annalizabeth on Discord
Character Name: Paladin Danse (though he's been stripped of the title by his canon point)
Character Age: Chronologically 20, looks and acts closer to 40
Canon: Fallout 4
Canon Point: Approximately three weeks after the conclusion of the quest "Blind Betrayal"
History: Wiki
Name two positive character traits for your character. How have these traits helped bonds or relationships the character has had?:
Dutiful
"I need to be the example, not the exception."
Described by his subordinates as "all soldier" with protocol as his bread and butter, Danse subscribes to the "first to charge, last to retreat" school of command, reiterating at every opportunity that he would shed his own blood or give his own life to protect a civilian or save a fellow soldier. Talk is cheap, but his loyal squad backs him up on this, with one gushing that he's "the most selfless person [she's] ever met" and that she's watched him "risk his own life based on nothing more than principle alone."
Self-sacrifice for a cause seems to be the highest possible virtue in his mind--in part because of his own trauma and deep lack of self-worth, almost as if he's hoping for an honorable excuse to put an end to his war-weariness, which he finds when he discovers that he is one of the "technology run amok" androids he's previously insisted are the biggest threat to humanity. He begs the Sole Survivor to kill him, or allow him to kill himself, rather than let him continue to exist as part of that threat.
While this is one possible ending to his story, a protagonist who has bonded with Danse after he recruited and mentored them can cite that friendship to talk him down and convince him that he deserves to live, pleading on behalf of the others who care about him too. Chief among those is the subordinate who praised him earlier, Haylen, who has risked her own life to beg the protagonist to spare him from execution, listing all the ways in which he has supported and nurtured and protected the soldiers under his command.
It is for the sake of these two friends that he will reconsider, saying he's been selfish not to think of the people who would mourn his death, and that he owes it to them to try and make a new life for himself even if it means violating the Brotherhood laws he once held sacred. Though his devotion to duty is what initially earned him the adulation of his subordinates, in the end, he serves them better by abandoning it so that he can continue to be a presence in their lives.
Idealistic
"Making the world better is the Brotherhood's primary mission. We just use less...eccentric methods."
The rose-colored glasses with which Danse views the Brotherhood of Steel could be cited as further evidence of delusion or brainwashing (see below), and there certainly is an element of that in the way he consistently sees the organization as it claims to be, and as it should be, rather than as it actually is.
But his devotion to that ideal stems from his wholehearted belief that nobody but the Brotherhood can possibly protect what's left of humankind from extinction. Convinced though he is that everyone would believe in the Brotherhood's cause if they weren't "blinded by rumors and misinformation," he still swears that he would gladly spill his own blood to defend the civilians who don't appreciate it or want him there. (This is not a position shared by most of his comrades-in-arms, who call the civilians "scum" and take no issue with raiding their farms or strongarming them for supplies.)
While nobody believes or agrees with Danse when he waxes poetic about how the Brotherhood can protect humanity from its self-destructive impulses and allow the world to rebuild in peace, some do respect him more for wanting that, and for his vocal concern about the innocents currently subjected to the violence and barbarism of the wasteland. Though he's abrasive and unfriendly (per Brotherhood tradition) to most other characters, those who share his idealism will still call him a friend (whether or not the sentiment is mutual.)
Deacon, the representative of a warring faction that otherwise wants the Brotherhood destroyed, will nonetheless describe Danse as a "stand-up guy" who's more honorable than the rest of them, and should he be exiled, express gratitude and relief that Danse is "better off without those assholes." Preston, the representative of a smaller local militia, though wary of Danse, still tries to reason with him and keep the peace with him, because he knows that they still share a common constructive goal that the rest of the Brotherhood isn't particularly interested in. Even Hancock, a ghoul to whom Danse is nothing but hostile, will protest that Danse deserves better than the treatment he gets from the people he's given his life to.
Despite Danse's general unpleasantness to all of them, the majority of the other companion characters--barring the ones who want the Commonwealth civilians dead--will rally around him and advocate for him when the Brotherhood sentences him to death, because they know him to be a noble and well-meaning person who can do better if given a chance.
Name two negative character traits for your character. How have these hindered their relationships or bonds the character has had?:
Brainwashed
"I might have been exiled from the Brotherhood, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand idly by while you tarnish its name."
Some players think it's a bug or an oversight that even after Danse is kicked out of the Brotherhood on pain of death and forced to spend the rest of his life fleeing from the members hunting him down for sport, his voice lines in praise of it don't change. It's not a bug. Danse is capable of massive cognitive dissonance when justifying his continued faith in the organization that wants him dead, even when he's been convinced that he deserves to live. The fact that he requires such thorough persuading of this in the first place is proof of the hold the Brotherhood's philosophy still has on him, and to some extent always will.
While his initial execution sentence generates a surge of goodwill among the acquaintances who ordinarily dislike him, keeping it is contingent on him deprogramming from the cult and beginning to make amends for the harm he caused in its name, and the story gives him little opportunity to do that. The Brotherhood is the only family he's ever known, he swears that his heart and mind will always belong to them even if his body is synthetic, and he cannot bring himself to disavow them even when their aggression against the other factions begins to escalate.
Despite the fact that the Sole Survivor will have saved his life twice over at this point--and despite the fact that they will be one of his only two friends in the world--should the protagonist allow another faction to destroy the Brotherhood's airship in response to their attacks on others, Danse will cut contact with them and refuse to speak to them again, instead isolating himself and becoming almost catatonic.
He will not attempt to harm them, out of respect for the life debt he owes them, but he can never forgive them for killing the people he once called family--even when the Brotherhood never hesitated to turn on him, and were posing an increasingly serious threat both to him and to the civilians he wants to protect. His residual, unrequited loyalty to them and their mission can cost him the last relationship lifeline he has left, and in losing all of that, he loses the same hard-won will to live that the friend he disowns was responsible for helping him find.
Prejudiced
"I can't believe you're replacing me with this...thing."
By a number of standards, Danse is refreshingly egalitarian. He's more than happy to serve alongside or take orders from soldiers of any ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. His open and seething prejudice is not the sort that might apply to anyone from a mundane Earth setting, and half of it is internalized and applies just as strongly to himself as to those he hates. But in the world he comes from, it's no wonder that nobody actually likes his company outside of the Brotherhood.
He's been taught to separate his post-apocalyptic society into "human" and "subhuman," and anyone in the "subhuman" category (usually those mutated by radiation or the Forced Evolutionary Virus, but the philosophy applies as well to synths for being lab-created rather than born) poses a threat to be wiped out. His reasoning is that these groups result from unchecked use of the kind of dangerous technology the Brotherhood exists to control, and he's not actually wrong about this, but it leads him and the rest of the Brotherhood to take it cruelly out on innocent people who find themselves the victims or pawns of that technology through no fault of their own, as well as on the ones who do pose actual threats.
While most of the Sole Survivor's other companions will engage in friendly banter, bonding over previous encounters and care for their mutual friend, Danse stands apart and gets along with almost none of them. He is openly nasty and occasionally threatening to the non-human companions, calling them things like "freak" and "filthy ghoul" rather than their names, and while he has no particular issue with most of the human characters, they find this attitude repugnant enough that they reject him as well even when he tries clumsily to be friendly. (The one exception, Cait, who seems friendly enough with him and doesn't mind his prejudice, later turns on him and calls loudly for his death upon learning he is a synth.)
The way they support him when push comes to shove demonstrates that the basic groundwork is there for him to be forgiven and make friends with some of them, but his progress toward unlearning his ingrained prejudice seems to be slow and applicable mostly to synths alone, and it is left unresolved whether he ever does apologize or make amends to the others he's insulted.
What is the most important relationship or bond your character has formed?:
Outside of the game's malleable protagonist, whose relationship with him is up to the player, the single most important person in Danse's life is Scribe Haylen, the medic of the recon squad he commands. Haylen is a kind and scholarly woman who questions the Brotherhood's violent tactics and exclusionary rhetoric much more openly than Danse does, wondering if they're doing the right thing and if there's a better way, and in her early days under Danse's command, she complains that he's too cold and unfeeling in his commitment to duty.
Only as she travels with him for months, bonding with him through the trauma of losing more than half of the squad members one by one, does she come to recognize his empathy, honor and constant punishing self-doubt and sense of obligation to others. She becomes his closest confidant, field-diagnosing him with PTSD that neither of them is equipped to treat, coming to describe him as a friend more than a superior.
While Danse remains too dutiful to speak of her the same way, he talks about her constantly, praising her at every opportunity as the perfect model of a scholar/soldier/medic that everyone should look up to, asking after her in a more personal way than he does his other subordinates, dwelling frequently on whether he's doing right by her and fretting to the Sole Survivor about whether he's pushing her too hard and being the commander she and the rest of the squad deserve. He admits that when she's needed comfort after losing a patient, he's held her and let her cry on his shoulder despite his own discomfort.
Regardless of what choices the player makes about Danse's fate, Haylen will always unfailingly fight for him at her own risk, and remains the sole member of the Brotherhood to keep contact with him after he's revealed as a synth, regularly smuggling him supplies and spending whatever time she can with him to continue monitoring his well-being, even though it could result in her own execution were she caught. She can be territorial with the Sole Survivor and a little competitive about which of them cares about him more, even or especially if they are romancing him. For his part, Danse worries about her safety, but he's too lonely, too attached to her, and too grateful for her friendship to tell her to stop.
What sort of bond or relationship would you be interested in exploring in this game?:
I would like to explore some relationships with non-human characters from other worlds, because I think that could go in some interesting directions and potentially help Danse to work through his prejudices without the more heavily reinforced baggage from his own--or could further exacerbate them, depending on how the CR develops.
I'd also really like him to develop some more friendships with people he can learn to trust, where they mutually watch each other's backs, or people with other complicated emotional issues that he could try to help with. He has a lot of natural empathy and emotional intelligence that he's used to suppressing, so letting him use and develop that by supporting someone else would be ideal.
Arrival Inventory:
⏵ Brotherhood-issue laser rifle
⏵ One extra clip of fusion-cell ammunition
⏵ Brotherhood uniform flightsuit with accompanying bomber jacket
Please provide two writing samples that are no more than one year old:
1. TDM thread with Arcade Gannon
2. Route 666 thread with Edward Courtenay
Player Name: Anna
Player is over 18?: Yes
Player Contact:
Character Name: Paladin Danse (though he's been stripped of the title by his canon point)
Character Age: Chronologically 20, looks and acts closer to 40
Canon: Fallout 4
Canon Point: Approximately three weeks after the conclusion of the quest "Blind Betrayal"
History: Wiki
Name two positive character traits for your character. How have these traits helped bonds or relationships the character has had?:
Dutiful
"I need to be the example, not the exception."
Described by his subordinates as "all soldier" with protocol as his bread and butter, Danse subscribes to the "first to charge, last to retreat" school of command, reiterating at every opportunity that he would shed his own blood or give his own life to protect a civilian or save a fellow soldier. Talk is cheap, but his loyal squad backs him up on this, with one gushing that he's "the most selfless person [she's] ever met" and that she's watched him "risk his own life based on nothing more than principle alone."
Self-sacrifice for a cause seems to be the highest possible virtue in his mind--in part because of his own trauma and deep lack of self-worth, almost as if he's hoping for an honorable excuse to put an end to his war-weariness, which he finds when he discovers that he is one of the "technology run amok" androids he's previously insisted are the biggest threat to humanity. He begs the Sole Survivor to kill him, or allow him to kill himself, rather than let him continue to exist as part of that threat.
While this is one possible ending to his story, a protagonist who has bonded with Danse after he recruited and mentored them can cite that friendship to talk him down and convince him that he deserves to live, pleading on behalf of the others who care about him too. Chief among those is the subordinate who praised him earlier, Haylen, who has risked her own life to beg the protagonist to spare him from execution, listing all the ways in which he has supported and nurtured and protected the soldiers under his command.
It is for the sake of these two friends that he will reconsider, saying he's been selfish not to think of the people who would mourn his death, and that he owes it to them to try and make a new life for himself even if it means violating the Brotherhood laws he once held sacred. Though his devotion to duty is what initially earned him the adulation of his subordinates, in the end, he serves them better by abandoning it so that he can continue to be a presence in their lives.
Idealistic
"Making the world better is the Brotherhood's primary mission. We just use less...eccentric methods."
The rose-colored glasses with which Danse views the Brotherhood of Steel could be cited as further evidence of delusion or brainwashing (see below), and there certainly is an element of that in the way he consistently sees the organization as it claims to be, and as it should be, rather than as it actually is.
But his devotion to that ideal stems from his wholehearted belief that nobody but the Brotherhood can possibly protect what's left of humankind from extinction. Convinced though he is that everyone would believe in the Brotherhood's cause if they weren't "blinded by rumors and misinformation," he still swears that he would gladly spill his own blood to defend the civilians who don't appreciate it or want him there. (This is not a position shared by most of his comrades-in-arms, who call the civilians "scum" and take no issue with raiding their farms or strongarming them for supplies.)
While nobody believes or agrees with Danse when he waxes poetic about how the Brotherhood can protect humanity from its self-destructive impulses and allow the world to rebuild in peace, some do respect him more for wanting that, and for his vocal concern about the innocents currently subjected to the violence and barbarism of the wasteland. Though he's abrasive and unfriendly (per Brotherhood tradition) to most other characters, those who share his idealism will still call him a friend (whether or not the sentiment is mutual.)
Deacon, the representative of a warring faction that otherwise wants the Brotherhood destroyed, will nonetheless describe Danse as a "stand-up guy" who's more honorable than the rest of them, and should he be exiled, express gratitude and relief that Danse is "better off without those assholes." Preston, the representative of a smaller local militia, though wary of Danse, still tries to reason with him and keep the peace with him, because he knows that they still share a common constructive goal that the rest of the Brotherhood isn't particularly interested in. Even Hancock, a ghoul to whom Danse is nothing but hostile, will protest that Danse deserves better than the treatment he gets from the people he's given his life to.
Despite Danse's general unpleasantness to all of them, the majority of the other companion characters--barring the ones who want the Commonwealth civilians dead--will rally around him and advocate for him when the Brotherhood sentences him to death, because they know him to be a noble and well-meaning person who can do better if given a chance.
Name two negative character traits for your character. How have these hindered their relationships or bonds the character has had?:
Brainwashed
"I might have been exiled from the Brotherhood, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand idly by while you tarnish its name."
Some players think it's a bug or an oversight that even after Danse is kicked out of the Brotherhood on pain of death and forced to spend the rest of his life fleeing from the members hunting him down for sport, his voice lines in praise of it don't change. It's not a bug. Danse is capable of massive cognitive dissonance when justifying his continued faith in the organization that wants him dead, even when he's been convinced that he deserves to live. The fact that he requires such thorough persuading of this in the first place is proof of the hold the Brotherhood's philosophy still has on him, and to some extent always will.
While his initial execution sentence generates a surge of goodwill among the acquaintances who ordinarily dislike him, keeping it is contingent on him deprogramming from the cult and beginning to make amends for the harm he caused in its name, and the story gives him little opportunity to do that. The Brotherhood is the only family he's ever known, he swears that his heart and mind will always belong to them even if his body is synthetic, and he cannot bring himself to disavow them even when their aggression against the other factions begins to escalate.
Despite the fact that the Sole Survivor will have saved his life twice over at this point--and despite the fact that they will be one of his only two friends in the world--should the protagonist allow another faction to destroy the Brotherhood's airship in response to their attacks on others, Danse will cut contact with them and refuse to speak to them again, instead isolating himself and becoming almost catatonic.
He will not attempt to harm them, out of respect for the life debt he owes them, but he can never forgive them for killing the people he once called family--even when the Brotherhood never hesitated to turn on him, and were posing an increasingly serious threat both to him and to the civilians he wants to protect. His residual, unrequited loyalty to them and their mission can cost him the last relationship lifeline he has left, and in losing all of that, he loses the same hard-won will to live that the friend he disowns was responsible for helping him find.
Prejudiced
"I can't believe you're replacing me with this...thing."
By a number of standards, Danse is refreshingly egalitarian. He's more than happy to serve alongside or take orders from soldiers of any ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. His open and seething prejudice is not the sort that might apply to anyone from a mundane Earth setting, and half of it is internalized and applies just as strongly to himself as to those he hates. But in the world he comes from, it's no wonder that nobody actually likes his company outside of the Brotherhood.
He's been taught to separate his post-apocalyptic society into "human" and "subhuman," and anyone in the "subhuman" category (usually those mutated by radiation or the Forced Evolutionary Virus, but the philosophy applies as well to synths for being lab-created rather than born) poses a threat to be wiped out. His reasoning is that these groups result from unchecked use of the kind of dangerous technology the Brotherhood exists to control, and he's not actually wrong about this, but it leads him and the rest of the Brotherhood to take it cruelly out on innocent people who find themselves the victims or pawns of that technology through no fault of their own, as well as on the ones who do pose actual threats.
While most of the Sole Survivor's other companions will engage in friendly banter, bonding over previous encounters and care for their mutual friend, Danse stands apart and gets along with almost none of them. He is openly nasty and occasionally threatening to the non-human companions, calling them things like "freak" and "filthy ghoul" rather than their names, and while he has no particular issue with most of the human characters, they find this attitude repugnant enough that they reject him as well even when he tries clumsily to be friendly. (The one exception, Cait, who seems friendly enough with him and doesn't mind his prejudice, later turns on him and calls loudly for his death upon learning he is a synth.)
The way they support him when push comes to shove demonstrates that the basic groundwork is there for him to be forgiven and make friends with some of them, but his progress toward unlearning his ingrained prejudice seems to be slow and applicable mostly to synths alone, and it is left unresolved whether he ever does apologize or make amends to the others he's insulted.
What is the most important relationship or bond your character has formed?:
Outside of the game's malleable protagonist, whose relationship with him is up to the player, the single most important person in Danse's life is Scribe Haylen, the medic of the recon squad he commands. Haylen is a kind and scholarly woman who questions the Brotherhood's violent tactics and exclusionary rhetoric much more openly than Danse does, wondering if they're doing the right thing and if there's a better way, and in her early days under Danse's command, she complains that he's too cold and unfeeling in his commitment to duty.
Only as she travels with him for months, bonding with him through the trauma of losing more than half of the squad members one by one, does she come to recognize his empathy, honor and constant punishing self-doubt and sense of obligation to others. She becomes his closest confidant, field-diagnosing him with PTSD that neither of them is equipped to treat, coming to describe him as a friend more than a superior.
While Danse remains too dutiful to speak of her the same way, he talks about her constantly, praising her at every opportunity as the perfect model of a scholar/soldier/medic that everyone should look up to, asking after her in a more personal way than he does his other subordinates, dwelling frequently on whether he's doing right by her and fretting to the Sole Survivor about whether he's pushing her too hard and being the commander she and the rest of the squad deserve. He admits that when she's needed comfort after losing a patient, he's held her and let her cry on his shoulder despite his own discomfort.
Regardless of what choices the player makes about Danse's fate, Haylen will always unfailingly fight for him at her own risk, and remains the sole member of the Brotherhood to keep contact with him after he's revealed as a synth, regularly smuggling him supplies and spending whatever time she can with him to continue monitoring his well-being, even though it could result in her own execution were she caught. She can be territorial with the Sole Survivor and a little competitive about which of them cares about him more, even or especially if they are romancing him. For his part, Danse worries about her safety, but he's too lonely, too attached to her, and too grateful for her friendship to tell her to stop.
What sort of bond or relationship would you be interested in exploring in this game?:
I would like to explore some relationships with non-human characters from other worlds, because I think that could go in some interesting directions and potentially help Danse to work through his prejudices without the more heavily reinforced baggage from his own--or could further exacerbate them, depending on how the CR develops.
I'd also really like him to develop some more friendships with people he can learn to trust, where they mutually watch each other's backs, or people with other complicated emotional issues that he could try to help with. He has a lot of natural empathy and emotional intelligence that he's used to suppressing, so letting him use and develop that by supporting someone else would be ideal.
Arrival Inventory:
⏵ Brotherhood-issue laser rifle
⏵ One extra clip of fusion-cell ammunition
⏵ Brotherhood uniform flightsuit with accompanying bomber jacket
Please provide two writing samples that are no more than one year old:
1. TDM thread with Arcade Gannon
2. Route 666 thread with Edward Courtenay