Matt Murdock

PHASE 1

Matt Murdock
File:Matt headshot.jpg Portrayed by Mat Gordon
Codename:	Daredevil
Affiliations:	New Mutants
Birthdate:	May 10, 1996
Journal:	x_daredevil
Player:	Maureen

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon

Details

Character Journal: x_daredevil

Real Name: Matthew Michael Murdock

Codename: Daredevil

Aliases: Matt Murdock

First Appearance: (link to LJ (x_logs) with date as link text)

Date of Birth: May 10, 1996

Place of Birth: New York, New York

Citizenship: USA

Relatives: Father: Jonathan “Jack” Murdock (aka Batlin’ Jack), deceased; Mother: Margaret Grace Callahan (aka Sister Maggie), unknown to Matt as his mother

Education: currently in the 9th grade

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: Student, Hoodlum

Team Affiliation: New Mutants

Biography

Murdock Family

Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Some people…aren’t. Matt Murdock was one of those people. His father, Jack, was a high school dropout, alcoholic, and a wannabe professional boxer who never amounted to anything serious in the ring. His mother was a high school girl who thought she was in love with a boxer until she discovered that she was pregnant and realized, she did not want to be married to a man who was barely able to support himself, much less her and a child and did not want to be a mother at 18. However, she was Catholic and did not believe in abortion either.

Nine months later, she left the baby with Jack hoping that a child would be the impetus that he needed to get his life together. It had been that or putting the child up for adoption, an option she did not favor as she would have no way to check up on her child or know how he was doing. Her parents had insisted though, a closed adoption would be best. Yes, there were other options, she recognized that peripherally, but she was a good daughter, or at least she tried to be, and she was scared. In regards to her child, she did what she hoped was best.

Having a child did help Jack, to an extent. He still boxed, but he also got a job working construction and sometimes for the local mob, and while his drinking continued, it lessened and it was more likely to occur at home instead of at the bar. It was at least something. Over the next several years Jack worked a number of odd jobs in an attempt to put food on the table with varying degrees of success. He pushed his son in school to always do well, helping him as much as he could with very limited means. He enrolled him in after school tutoring programs, extended day programs, free Y camps for gymnastics and vacation bible school in the summers, anything he could that was free or Matt could get a scholarship to so that he would do well in school and stay out of trouble. Jack did not want his son to be the loser that he was.

Childhood

Matt grew up getting taunted for how much studying he did, even at a young age and it frequently meant that he was in fights with the other kids. His father forbade him from fighting, the only time that his father had ever hit him was the day he had come home with a black eye and crowing about how he had punched the other kid and how he had gone down, TKO!

Shocked and bewildered by his father hitting him, Matt ran, staying away for two days. He was on his way home, crossing a busy intersection in New York when he saw a blind man ahead of him about to be hit by a truck. He pushed the man out of the way and was hit by the truck instead. The truck belonged to Stark Enterprises and the driver had been running late, taking a short cut and driving faster than he really should have been, especially with barrels of chemicals in the back.

Some of the barrels tipped and broke open, the entire situation was a mess from start to finish, and 12 year old Matt woke up in the hospital a few days later, his father by his side, blind. Permanently. Over the next few weeks, Matt began occupational therapy, learning to use a cane and read Braille. At the same time, he kept hearing things, getting pounding migraines and complaining that everything was too loud. The doctors thought that this was a side effect from the chemicals that blinded him or from Matt hitting his head and having some sort of traumatic brain injury. Despite all their tests all the doctors were able to do was prescribe Matt pain medication to help with the migraines.

Even with the generous settlement that Stark Industries gave to the Murdock’s to help cover Matt’s medical expenses and whatnot, Jack had to work hard to keep the family together. He stopped drinking entirely, training hard for boxing matches even though he was over 40 by this point and well over the hill for a boxer. Jack tried to make himself an example for Matt who was working hard to relearn the most basic tasks and dealing with crippling migraines. Jack thought that if Matt could do it, rebuild his life, he could do it too. Simple enough.

During this time Matt had taken to stealing his father’s pain medication to help supplement his own when it didn’t work, taking more than his prescribed dosage. Nothing was ever that simple though. Jack’s games were being fixed by the local mob boss and he wasn’t winning out of ability, strategy or talent in the ring. After weeks of consistent wins, Jack was ordered to take a dive. To lose. Matt was in the audience like normal, cheering his father on from the front row even though he hated the noise and smells there, he never missed one of his dad’s matches unless he was in the throes of a migraine so bad that he couldn’t stand up without puking. Jack couldn’t do it. He couldn’t intentionally lose with his son sitting right there, cheering him on. Matt was the reason he had stopped drinking, the reason he had gone back to boxing. No. He wouldn’t lose.

After that match, after he had showered in the locker room and gotten dressed to meet Matt so they could go home, he left through the back door and met two goons that worked for the mob boss. He wasn’t too surprised. He had expected to get worked over, maybe bust a rib or two. They beat him to a bloody pulp, then shot him, all within Matt’s hearing.

Jack was unrecognizable to Matt when he was taken to the city medical examiner to identify his father’s body. He ran his fingers over Jack’s face slowly, trying to identify his features, but they were too disfigured. In the end, the priest of the church made the identification along with finger prints. Without any family that Matt knew of, and the nun his father was friends with and who helped him sometimes at religious school or as an altar boy, Sister Maggie, he was remanded into state custody.

Fostercare

It only took a couple months in foster care before Matt got into trouble for stealing medication and less time than that for him to get in trouble for fighting. The home he was in had several children of varying ages and with different needs and he was the second oldest. There was another girl a year or so older than he was. Coming home early one day, he found her upstairs in the bedroom with their foster father. When he said something to his foster sister, she denied any sort of inappropriate relations and made him promise not to say anything. It took a few months, but he caught them again one night after everyone was asleep. This time, he didn’t say anything to anyone and just got a baseball bat and beat the crap out of his foster father.

He was arrested and sent to juvenile hall. Spending a couple weeks there, mostly in solitary due to his disability, Matt was released from juvie and put into a therapeutic group home and ordered to counseling. His dependence on pain medication to help keep the migraines away increased in juvie with the stress both physically and emotionally, but also on his enhanced senses. The group home wasn’t a bad place though, Matt actually liked it for the most part. It was…stable. A lot more so than some of the other places he’d been.

After being arrested for attempting to buy drugs to help ease the pain in his head, Matt was sent to rehab to get off drugs and receive therapy. It was there that a doctor considered that there might be more going on than a traumatic brain injury leading to migraines due to noises and smells. Familiar with Dr. McCoy and Dr. MacTaggert's work, the doctor evaluated Matt and a test revealed that he was a mutant. A battery of tests later, Matt’s pain finally eased as he was placed in a sensory deprivation chamber for the first time.

When he was released from rehab, he was sent to Xavier’s School to try again without getting into trouble. With Xavier’s able to teach him what he needed to know about powers control, he would hopefully be able to stop taking all the pain medication that he had been dependent on for so many years. He is still in the foster system and meets every 6 weeks or so as needed with his case worker(s) to determine that everything is still okay and is subject to random drug tests. He is also able to be adopted should anyone be interested.

Living At The X-Mansion

May cover as many years as you want, but the sub-headings are to break up large blocks of text.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'8"

Weight: 135lbs

Eyes: blue (milky appearance)

Hair: red

Other Features: faint red/white scars around his eyes from the accident that blinded him, five perfectly circular scars on one shoulder

Powers

Matt’s powers are very similar to Wolverine’s in a lot of ways. He has enhanced senses (hearing, touch, taste, and smell) though not eyesight for obvious reasons. He also can use his hearing as sonar like a bat to determine what is around him and get outlines of images as the sound waves bounce off. This being said – he gets outlines of objects; he doesn’t get detail, texture or colours. He also has a full 360° perception.

In terms of sensitivity, he can hear a heartbeat and use it to determine if a person is lying or not, he can hear police sirens a couple blocks away in New York or feel the indentation of a ball point pen on the paper below the one that was written on. He cannot see TV, movie or computer screens and while he can read a printed book, Braille is much easier. Anything printed on glossy paper like high end comic books he cannot read. He cannot see colours at all.

His biggest weakness is loud noises. The louder the noise, the more it hurts his senses. He does not do well in large groups or in loud places where he can be overwhelmed, though he has made significant strides on his own in dealing with these things as he lived in New York City for most of his life.

Equipment

Matt is never without his white cane.

Trivia

Little snippets that reflect your character's personality. eg: Cain doesn't know much about music after 1970, but is a big fan of Alison Blaire.

Plots

Links only. No descriptions.

Meta

Player: Maureen

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AIM:

Player Icon Base: Mat Gordon

Meta Trivia

Matt was brought into the game by Maureen in March 2011