Otto Octavius (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sciencesquid) wrote2021-12-23 05:44 pm
sciencesquid) wrote2021-12-23 05:44 pm
Application | Songerein
Warning, despite Otto's canon point being set in the original movie, there will be spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home in this application.
Player: Meowzy
Age: 33
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
meowzy
Current Characters: Yujin Mikotoba
Character: Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock
Canon: Spider-Man 2 and also Spider-Man: No Way Home
Canon point: After making the deal with Harry Osborn but before flinging a car into a coffee shop
Age: 44
Background Information: Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Personality:
Otto’s personality is interesting to describe, as there are in fact two very different sides to him. First of all, let’s look at regular old Otto Octavius. He really is just a generally nice, chummy guy. While at first he insists he's too busy to talk to students and only humors Peter because Harry Osborn orders him to, he loses that attitude once he realizes just how brilliant this kid is and becomes charmed by him instead. Otto spends the next hour and a half completely absorbed in discussing the details of his new fusion reactor principle with Peter, even as his wife Rosalie serves them tea. The conversation eventually turns to Peter himself, and Otto ends up talking to him about matters of love. Speaking of which, he absolutely adores his wife and takes relationships very seriously, supporting the notion that one has to work at it. Otto likes to keep a lighthearted attitude when he can, even telling a bad joke at the start of his very official, very professional fusion demonstration.
Otto is a scientist with high principles, whose main goal is the pursuit of knowledge and progress. When Harry Osborn makes a remark about a nobel prize, Otto's immediate response is that it's not about the prizes. Otto's philosophy is that intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift to be used for the good of mankind. Being brilliant is not enough either; one has to work hard. One thing of note, however, is that he doesn't take criticism very well. When Peter wonders whether he's sure he can stabilize the fusion reaction, it leads to quite a defensive earful about how this is Otto's life's work. Any further concerns are then dismissed with a joking attitude. When the time comes to put his theories to practical use, however, he is Icarus and he flies too close to the sun- or the solar fusion reactor, anyway.
Thanks to his hubris and inability to admit defeat, the situation escalates so far that it gives birth to the being known as Doctor Octopus, or Doc Ock. He never takes that title for himself, mind you, it’s simply a name coined by the Daily Bugle. As far as he’s concerned, he’s still Otto Octavius. However, his personality is quite different now. He’s short-tempered, shows a mean sadistic streak and seems to have lost all sense of empathy. Though he doesn’t often do it, he will on rare occasion use the “we/us” pronoun to include the tentacles as part of his speech. (example: “we grow tired of your questions, boy!”) It’s almost as if he’s grown beyond the human he once was and has now detached himself from society.
Granted, the drastic change is not entirely his fault. With the inhibitor chip destroyed, the AI of the tentacle assistants taints his mind and sends him down a slippery slope of reckless insanity. He hears them ‘talking’ in his head and replies vocally. Though at first he’s still willing to consider that the experiment went wrong because he miscalculated, the AI immediately begins to feed his arrogance and justify his actions. It’s so much easier to think his wife died because of a mechanical error than his own mistakes. Caught in his denial and enabled by nasty mechanical limbs, he decides he’ll just have to do the experiment all over again, but bigger and better this time. His crimes start off with robbing banks and taking an old lady hostage, but soon escalate into endangering hundreds of people aboard a train- even throwing them off with intent to kill. He has no qualms with intimidating Harry Osborn and making shady deals just to get what he wants; a second chance to prove that his science was sound and the fusion reactor can work. He even threatens Peter, the kid whose presence he enjoyed so much before, and kidnaps his girlfriend with no remorse whatsoever. If anything, he quite seems to enjoy being a villain.
Let’s dedicate a paragraph to the tentacles themselves, shall we? Otto originally refers to them as 'actuators'. These things can act independently of Otto’s consciousness, as illustrated by the hospital scene. While Otto is unconscious and doctors prepare to remove the mechanical limbs by force, they go on a defensive rampage, killing everyone in the room. Though they usually act in tandem to Otto’s motivations and actions, it’s very clear their AI allows them to think for themselves when needed. For some reason, the AI is highly malicious, with no regard for human life or morality. While at first Otto insists he’s not a criminal, the ‘voices’ of the tentacles convince him that it’s totally justified to rob banks, take people hostage and cause a whole lot of property damage, because ‘the real crime would be not to finish what they started’. Why the arms are so interested in finishing the fusion reactor is never officially explained, but it can be assumed that it’s because the work with the reactor is the reason they were created in the first place.
Going back to Otto Octavius himself for a bit, there is a moment near the end of the movie where the limbs are stunned by electrical currents and he regains his old self. Peter manages to convince him this time that the experiment is unstable and needs to be destroyed, no matter how much it pains Otto. When the tentacles reawaken and attempt to take over once more, he fights them and forces them to help drown the experiment in the river. Knowing it will be the end of him, he steps up to destroy the reactor because he 'refuses to die a monster'. This means Otto is perfectly aware of the fact that he's become a terrible villain, and attempts to reach atonement in his final moments.
No Way Home’s influence:
Taken to the MCU from a moment just before Peter talks sense into him, Otto is still obsessed with his fusion reactor, even in another world. His priority when he first appears in No Way Home is to find this thing again. Believing that Peter Parker is somehow responsible for its absence, he hunts the kid down and starts another violent fight with him. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s in another world and even when he discovers Spider-Man is someone else, he can’t grasp the scope of what’s happening. After his tentacles are taken over by Peter’s nanotechnology and he’s imprisoned by Dr. Strange, he spends a good portion of the movie just being a hilarious sourpuss. He dismisses magic, scoffs at the gang’s plan to take down the Green Goblin and is just generally a difficult person all around. His reaction to being ‘fixed’ by Peter is not a positive one either, as he doesn’t believe he needs fixing and equates it to a dog being castrated. In the end, he undergoes this procedure by force.
No Way Home then confirms that the AI of the tentacles is entirely to blame for him being, as MCU Peter puts it, ‘miserable all the time’. The trauma of losing his wife seems to have had very little effect, since once the inhibitor chip is activated, Otto returns to the man he used to be. He no longer hears the ‘voices’ of the tentacles, which were apparently buzzing through his head all the time, and can now control them fully. He’s relieved, even elated, and one of the first things he does is offer his gratitude to Peter. Then he asks how he can help. He doesn't dwell on the person he used to be and the things he did as ‘Doc Ock’. Instead, he takes a proactive approach to help the other villains. Though Electro’s attack forces him out of the picture for a while in a literal sense, he returns during the showdown at the Statue of Liberty and tricks the guy in order to ‘fix’ him. When he encounters his own Peter again, there’s not a single trace of a grudge or discomfort. Instead, he’s sentimental and just genuinely happy to see this kid again.
As a sidenote, No Way Home confirms that Otto was friends with Norman Osborn before his death. This makes sense, since OsCorp is funding Otto’s research and Harry Osborn is personally involved with this. Still, No Way Home adds an emotional layer to this where, when Otto regains his sanity, he shares a friendly moment with Norman right before shit hits the fan, Goblin-style. It’s also stated that Otto learned the Green Goblin’s identity from the news, which goes against the ending of the first movie and even Harry’s misunderstanding regarding his father’s death. While I don’t know what to make of this discrepancy, it does add an interesting parallel: One of Otto’s close friends also lost his sanity and turned supervillain, and despite knowing about this, he’s followed in those same footsteps. (Meanwhile, he hears that the Lizard in the cage next to him is Curt Connors and doesn’t react at all, even though that guy was supposed to be a friend of his too. Oops.)
Abilities & Inventory:
Tentacles! TENTACLES! I mean- There’s no other way to put it, really; he’s just a normal human being with insanely overpowered mechanical tentacles. These things were created to survive in a nuclear fusion environment, so they’re incredibly durable. Impervious to magnetism, impervious to heat… They’re also superhumanly strong, able to lift objects of incredible weight and fling them. At one point, he even uses them to tear a huge metal vault door straight out of the wall. The limbs can extend through a sort of telescoping principle to become even longer, so while they’re usually about eight feet long, they can grow to be about twenty four feet long in total. They have little jaws that can snap and dig into surfaces to take hold, allowing Otto to climb vertically. They’re equipped with knives, tweezers and cameras, and can go straight for a person’s throat in the worst way. The tentacles are shown to have some weaknesses, though. For one, electrocuting them seems to stun them and diminish the AI’s effect on Otto’s brain, if only temporarily. In No Way Home, they’re taken over by Peter’s nanotechnology and most shocking of all, the Green Goblin succeeds in severing one of the limbs with his glider.
Suitability & Plans:
At first glance, having a scientist supervillain from a technologically-advanced world in a setting like Songerein’s might seem out of place. However, I think that’s really the genius of it. Otto’s main goal in both movies is to keep working on that fusion reactor, but that’s virtually impossible in this setting. Or rather, it is possible, but he’ll have to think outside the box to create this ‘power of the sun in the palm of his hand’. In order to accomplish this goal, he’ll have to forget all the technological know-how he currently possesses and start again from scratch. And once he does succeed in creating something similar to the fusion reactor, what’s next? He can help develop the setting’s existing technology and bring some more fun progress. (Assuming he doesn’t get imprisoned for major property damage, anyway.) I don’t expect that a replacement to the inhibitor chip can ever be built in Songerein, but one day I could canon update him to his more chill self from No Way Home. …And then maybe destroy the new chip some time after that. The possibilities are endless!
Player: Meowzy
Age: 33
Contact:
Current Characters: Yujin Mikotoba
Character: Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock
Canon: Spider-Man 2 and also Spider-Man: No Way Home
Canon point: After making the deal with Harry Osborn but before flinging a car into a coffee shop
Age: 44
Background Information: Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Personality:
Otto’s personality is interesting to describe, as there are in fact two very different sides to him. First of all, let’s look at regular old Otto Octavius. He really is just a generally nice, chummy guy. While at first he insists he's too busy to talk to students and only humors Peter because Harry Osborn orders him to, he loses that attitude once he realizes just how brilliant this kid is and becomes charmed by him instead. Otto spends the next hour and a half completely absorbed in discussing the details of his new fusion reactor principle with Peter, even as his wife Rosalie serves them tea. The conversation eventually turns to Peter himself, and Otto ends up talking to him about matters of love. Speaking of which, he absolutely adores his wife and takes relationships very seriously, supporting the notion that one has to work at it. Otto likes to keep a lighthearted attitude when he can, even telling a bad joke at the start of his very official, very professional fusion demonstration.
Otto is a scientist with high principles, whose main goal is the pursuit of knowledge and progress. When Harry Osborn makes a remark about a nobel prize, Otto's immediate response is that it's not about the prizes. Otto's philosophy is that intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift to be used for the good of mankind. Being brilliant is not enough either; one has to work hard. One thing of note, however, is that he doesn't take criticism very well. When Peter wonders whether he's sure he can stabilize the fusion reaction, it leads to quite a defensive earful about how this is Otto's life's work. Any further concerns are then dismissed with a joking attitude. When the time comes to put his theories to practical use, however, he is Icarus and he flies too close to the sun- or the solar fusion reactor, anyway.
Thanks to his hubris and inability to admit defeat, the situation escalates so far that it gives birth to the being known as Doctor Octopus, or Doc Ock. He never takes that title for himself, mind you, it’s simply a name coined by the Daily Bugle. As far as he’s concerned, he’s still Otto Octavius. However, his personality is quite different now. He’s short-tempered, shows a mean sadistic streak and seems to have lost all sense of empathy. Though he doesn’t often do it, he will on rare occasion use the “we/us” pronoun to include the tentacles as part of his speech. (example: “we grow tired of your questions, boy!”) It’s almost as if he’s grown beyond the human he once was and has now detached himself from society.
Granted, the drastic change is not entirely his fault. With the inhibitor chip destroyed, the AI of the tentacle assistants taints his mind and sends him down a slippery slope of reckless insanity. He hears them ‘talking’ in his head and replies vocally. Though at first he’s still willing to consider that the experiment went wrong because he miscalculated, the AI immediately begins to feed his arrogance and justify his actions. It’s so much easier to think his wife died because of a mechanical error than his own mistakes. Caught in his denial and enabled by nasty mechanical limbs, he decides he’ll just have to do the experiment all over again, but bigger and better this time. His crimes start off with robbing banks and taking an old lady hostage, but soon escalate into endangering hundreds of people aboard a train- even throwing them off with intent to kill. He has no qualms with intimidating Harry Osborn and making shady deals just to get what he wants; a second chance to prove that his science was sound and the fusion reactor can work. He even threatens Peter, the kid whose presence he enjoyed so much before, and kidnaps his girlfriend with no remorse whatsoever. If anything, he quite seems to enjoy being a villain.
Let’s dedicate a paragraph to the tentacles themselves, shall we? Otto originally refers to them as 'actuators'. These things can act independently of Otto’s consciousness, as illustrated by the hospital scene. While Otto is unconscious and doctors prepare to remove the mechanical limbs by force, they go on a defensive rampage, killing everyone in the room. Though they usually act in tandem to Otto’s motivations and actions, it’s very clear their AI allows them to think for themselves when needed. For some reason, the AI is highly malicious, with no regard for human life or morality. While at first Otto insists he’s not a criminal, the ‘voices’ of the tentacles convince him that it’s totally justified to rob banks, take people hostage and cause a whole lot of property damage, because ‘the real crime would be not to finish what they started’. Why the arms are so interested in finishing the fusion reactor is never officially explained, but it can be assumed that it’s because the work with the reactor is the reason they were created in the first place.
Going back to Otto Octavius himself for a bit, there is a moment near the end of the movie where the limbs are stunned by electrical currents and he regains his old self. Peter manages to convince him this time that the experiment is unstable and needs to be destroyed, no matter how much it pains Otto. When the tentacles reawaken and attempt to take over once more, he fights them and forces them to help drown the experiment in the river. Knowing it will be the end of him, he steps up to destroy the reactor because he 'refuses to die a monster'. This means Otto is perfectly aware of the fact that he's become a terrible villain, and attempts to reach atonement in his final moments.
No Way Home’s influence:
Taken to the MCU from a moment just before Peter talks sense into him, Otto is still obsessed with his fusion reactor, even in another world. His priority when he first appears in No Way Home is to find this thing again. Believing that Peter Parker is somehow responsible for its absence, he hunts the kid down and starts another violent fight with him. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s in another world and even when he discovers Spider-Man is someone else, he can’t grasp the scope of what’s happening. After his tentacles are taken over by Peter’s nanotechnology and he’s imprisoned by Dr. Strange, he spends a good portion of the movie just being a hilarious sourpuss. He dismisses magic, scoffs at the gang’s plan to take down the Green Goblin and is just generally a difficult person all around. His reaction to being ‘fixed’ by Peter is not a positive one either, as he doesn’t believe he needs fixing and equates it to a dog being castrated. In the end, he undergoes this procedure by force.
No Way Home then confirms that the AI of the tentacles is entirely to blame for him being, as MCU Peter puts it, ‘miserable all the time’. The trauma of losing his wife seems to have had very little effect, since once the inhibitor chip is activated, Otto returns to the man he used to be. He no longer hears the ‘voices’ of the tentacles, which were apparently buzzing through his head all the time, and can now control them fully. He’s relieved, even elated, and one of the first things he does is offer his gratitude to Peter. Then he asks how he can help. He doesn't dwell on the person he used to be and the things he did as ‘Doc Ock’. Instead, he takes a proactive approach to help the other villains. Though Electro’s attack forces him out of the picture for a while in a literal sense, he returns during the showdown at the Statue of Liberty and tricks the guy in order to ‘fix’ him. When he encounters his own Peter again, there’s not a single trace of a grudge or discomfort. Instead, he’s sentimental and just genuinely happy to see this kid again.
As a sidenote, No Way Home confirms that Otto was friends with Norman Osborn before his death. This makes sense, since OsCorp is funding Otto’s research and Harry Osborn is personally involved with this. Still, No Way Home adds an emotional layer to this where, when Otto regains his sanity, he shares a friendly moment with Norman right before shit hits the fan, Goblin-style. It’s also stated that Otto learned the Green Goblin’s identity from the news, which goes against the ending of the first movie and even Harry’s misunderstanding regarding his father’s death. While I don’t know what to make of this discrepancy, it does add an interesting parallel: One of Otto’s close friends also lost his sanity and turned supervillain, and despite knowing about this, he’s followed in those same footsteps. (Meanwhile, he hears that the Lizard in the cage next to him is Curt Connors and doesn’t react at all, even though that guy was supposed to be a friend of his too. Oops.)
Abilities & Inventory:
Tentacles! TENTACLES! I mean- There’s no other way to put it, really; he’s just a normal human being with insanely overpowered mechanical tentacles. These things were created to survive in a nuclear fusion environment, so they’re incredibly durable. Impervious to magnetism, impervious to heat… They’re also superhumanly strong, able to lift objects of incredible weight and fling them. At one point, he even uses them to tear a huge metal vault door straight out of the wall. The limbs can extend through a sort of telescoping principle to become even longer, so while they’re usually about eight feet long, they can grow to be about twenty four feet long in total. They have little jaws that can snap and dig into surfaces to take hold, allowing Otto to climb vertically. They’re equipped with knives, tweezers and cameras, and can go straight for a person’s throat in the worst way. The tentacles are shown to have some weaknesses, though. For one, electrocuting them seems to stun them and diminish the AI’s effect on Otto’s brain, if only temporarily. In No Way Home, they’re taken over by Peter’s nanotechnology and most shocking of all, the Green Goblin succeeds in severing one of the limbs with his glider.
Suitability & Plans:
At first glance, having a scientist supervillain from a technologically-advanced world in a setting like Songerein’s might seem out of place. However, I think that’s really the genius of it. Otto’s main goal in both movies is to keep working on that fusion reactor, but that’s virtually impossible in this setting. Or rather, it is possible, but he’ll have to think outside the box to create this ‘power of the sun in the palm of his hand’. In order to accomplish this goal, he’ll have to forget all the technological know-how he currently possesses and start again from scratch. And once he does succeed in creating something similar to the fusion reactor, what’s next? He can help develop the setting’s existing technology and bring some more fun progress. (Assuming he doesn’t get imprisoned for major property damage, anyway.) I don’t expect that a replacement to the inhibitor chip can ever be built in Songerein, but one day I could canon update him to his more chill self from No Way Home. …And then maybe destroy the new chip some time after that. The possibilities are endless!