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metempsychoticPLAYER
Player name: Malarkey
Contact: plurk - malarkeyinc
Characters currently in-game: None.
CHARACTER
Character Name: Isabella 'Bella' Sheridan
Character Age: 30
Canon: Heroes Television Series - String Theory MUX Timeline
Canon Point: Upon the closing of the game, during her indefinite circumstantial retirement.
World Description: A elaborated version of the Heroes TV show's setting, where poorly-conceived ideas of evolutionary processes serve as an excuse to give people super-powers, and in which the social and political consequences of the emergence of powered individuals serves to spin the modern world we know towards alternate apocalyptic and dystopic outcomes.
History: Her complete character page can be found here: http://string-theory.wikidot.com/char:bella. The 'background' tab discusses much of her early-day activity. Un-listed are her (somewhat unwilling) escapades with yet another shadowy organization ('The Institute), her romantic entanglements with a serial killer and a mad scientist, her bludgeoning of her alternate-future-child, and a second kidnapping and near-brush with torture and execution by vigilantes. Mostly it has all involved her desperately trying to stay ahead of her own mistakes without ever truly facing her sins or overcoming her foibles.
Personality: Bella is driven, ambitious, calculating and perceptive. She affects warmth and buoyancy, and it's not exactly a show; she likes people, but she is the furthest thing from self-sacrificing. While by no means psychopathic or actively antisocial, she possesses an occasionally dim view of humanity that conveniently excuses her own (and severe) ethical missteps. The best uncomplicated feeling she can have for someone is respect, and that respect is the minimum prerequisite for her loyalty… that and a sense that one will contribute to her happiness and success. One on one she is pleasant, cheerful, even jocular, though always professional if the setting is professional - even deviations are to a larger purpose. In groups she is assertive without being overwhelming, and usually likes to use jokes to get attention rather than direct grabs for notice. The only real hint of her inner distance is her lack of close friends, and her lack of obvious weakness or vulnerability. It's not that she doesn't have her weaknesses, her doubts, her fears. It's that she almost never shares them. To do so would put her, in her mind, at a disadvantage.
The circumstances of Bella's life have made it harder and harder to retain an obviously cheerful mien. She's a consummate actress, in her own way, but concealing her feelings takes effort, and some feelings have grown too strong to suppress efficiently. For those who know her well enough, the 'real' Dr. Sheridan is a very wry, often snide, and above all else extremely cynical person. She never thought she had much in the way of ideals before, but her hostility towards generic idealism has only grown in the face of her ever-more-screwed-up-and-at-risk life. This has led her to seek out and open up primarily people who have no basis upon which to judge her, those who have transgressed sufficiently that her own transgressions appear equivalent or even mild by comparison.
Due to the various life-threatening situations she has lived through, and her lack of appropriate coping mechanisms, Bella temporarily developed a conversion disorder that caused psychosomatic pain in her leg. The origin of this condition was her first life-threatening trauma, when she was kidnapped and shot in the leg - it is from the location of the gunshot wound that the pain emanates. The disorder asserted itself when she feels she is losing control in a critical fashion, particularly when said loss of control relates to her personal safety and well being. She received some treatment for it, but extreme circumstances will still cause her to develop leg-weakness.
Inventory: Professional clothing and a purse containing: a wallet with paper money but no ID, a burner cellphone, a bottle of pepper-spray, a lighter and a cigarette case containing five high-grade marijuana cigarettes.
Abilities: Bella is a trained and licensed medical doctor with a speciality in psychiatric care. She is capable, intelligent and ruthless (if weak-willed). She has developed a number of theories regarding the interaction of human psychology and unprecedented super-powers, and has experience running highly-illegal but fairly successful covert medical trials on live human subjects. She is an urban survivor by dint of quick wits and charm as opposed to street-smarts, and has generally proven to be able to either make herself useful or seemingly harmless. She's also half-decent at Latin and has the breadth and range of general cultural and literary knowledge one would expect from a highly-educated child of the intellectual and professional middle class.
Flaws: To call Bella a villain is to overstate her commitment to evil. She is not evil due to any possession of a will to power or a desire to do harm, but rather due to a weakness of character. A pampered only child of the middle class, a member of the sacrosanct medical profession, a woman of remarkable intelligence and good looks but a underdeveloped moral character. It's not that she isn't capable of doing good, or wanting to do good - she threw herself into the task of helping the hordes of sick and injured after the nuclear detonation in Midtown, holds strong political convictions (particularly regarding the rights of women), and can be a fiercely loyal to those she loves - but she has shown herself capable time and time again of grave ethical breaches and shameless self-service at the expense of others, all while viewing herself as the victim more often than not.
To wit: she has experimented on live human subjects in the service of shadowy para-governmental agencies and abused her doctor/patient confidentiality in the interests of her employers as well as her own personal whims. She has lied and cried and weaseled her way out of receiving her just desserts, using charm and pity to create a defensive layer of others around herself, and to maintain mien of normality in a thoroughly messed up life. In truth, she is entirely capable of doing pretty much anything she thinks she can get away with, which means that when provided with sufficiently secrecy she could do just about anything. This doesn't mean that she will do anything just because she can - she's not an inhuman monster so much as human all too human (this, at least, is what she'd insist) - but given incentive, sufficient means of compartmentalization, an assurance that there will be no consequences for her, very little is beyond her. The fact that she was very early in her career recruited by a series of clandestine organizations gave her precisely the environment she needed to become the all-too-human monster she is.
She also has a penchant for light recreational drug use and is an unembarrassed cultural and intellectual snob. But these peccadillos tend to dim in comparison to her real crimes.
SAMPLES
AN ENTRY WRITTEN UPON DISCOVERING HER PRIVATE JOURNAL HAS BEEN READ BY ANOTHER
Should I be surprised? Why would you ever write down what you wouldn't want read? Why not just think it? However much I understand the sacredness of privacy, isn't the very act of committing something to paper at least flirting with the possibility of its being read by another? Like a suicide fantasy, eavesdropping at your own funeral, doesn't writing a journal entertain on some deep - I guess I have to call it unconscious - level the desire to have someone come upon it, open it and-?
But that's Vienna sausage filling. Yes, this was supposed to be read; it was supposed to be read by me. Secrets are still permitted, aren't they? It's an expression of my thoughts, the record of a process, and it should no more be available for perusal than my mind. I know I didn't want or anticipate this, because I'm so furious. And so ashamed.
That's the worst of it, really. The shame. I like myself. A great deal. I should not be ashamed. I should not feel bad about being as angry as I am. The world is fucked, my life is fucked, and I know I may well be part of the problem. What is easy about living, knowing you're as bad as you are? The blissful, righteous ignorance of these people, I would envy it if it didn't disgust me so. Brutality, inhumanity, treachery - I accept that this seems to be a common lot for many people, myself included. But to dress it up?
I got off topic. And I note, upon review, how it happened. Diagram of a defense mechanism: sense of guilt followed by justification, followed by self-critique and a consequent shifting of blame. Guilt transferred to others, synonymous with threat of exterior judgment. Self-critique pays for self awareness, a sacred virtue in psychological practice. Know yourself. Get better.
I'm Gretel the Cross-Sectioned Dairy Cow.
I don't want this for myself. I want to be better. I want to be good. I want to be fondly regarded and fondly remembered. And I cannot believe that this desire is synonymous with weakness, though some hard part of me insists that's so. She's a creature that knows no compromise, and I admire her and need her, but she'll kill me. Get me killed.
It can't be a matter of cowardice, though. It's about living for something, something besides living alone. Because it's unendurable, this existential dead weight. I don't know if that means I'd have to be willing to die for it, then, this thing to live for. I'm not sure I'm ready to put that question to myself. I can't honestly answer except in that very moment, after all. The burden of Sophie's choice isn't that you can't choose, but that you can, and you must suffer the wound of that knowledge. Only the incredible stress of such an event can reveal those hairline cracks, those fine but final distinctions.
I'll put that moment off as long as I can, thanks. There are times when I'm happy and I want things, rather than just wanting things not to be. There are enough of these moments and more than moments that I'm in no hurry to face a mortal choice.
I think now is the time to end this journal. If I start another, it will be in another volume, and it will be to some different purpose. As to whether I now know myself, it was arrogant even to presume. No one knows themselves by themselves - that is raison d'être of psychiatry. You cannot know yourself. Your only hope is to find someone who can.
I.S.
Player name: Malarkey
Contact: plurk - malarkeyinc
Characters currently in-game: None.
CHARACTER
Character Name: Isabella 'Bella' Sheridan
Character Age: 30
Canon: Heroes Television Series - String Theory MUX Timeline
Canon Point: Upon the closing of the game, during her indefinite circumstantial retirement.
World Description: A elaborated version of the Heroes TV show's setting, where poorly-conceived ideas of evolutionary processes serve as an excuse to give people super-powers, and in which the social and political consequences of the emergence of powered individuals serves to spin the modern world we know towards alternate apocalyptic and dystopic outcomes.
History: Her complete character page can be found here: http://string-theory.wikidot.com/char:bella. The 'background' tab discusses much of her early-day activity. Un-listed are her (somewhat unwilling) escapades with yet another shadowy organization ('The Institute), her romantic entanglements with a serial killer and a mad scientist, her bludgeoning of her alternate-future-child, and a second kidnapping and near-brush with torture and execution by vigilantes. Mostly it has all involved her desperately trying to stay ahead of her own mistakes without ever truly facing her sins or overcoming her foibles.
Personality: Bella is driven, ambitious, calculating and perceptive. She affects warmth and buoyancy, and it's not exactly a show; she likes people, but she is the furthest thing from self-sacrificing. While by no means psychopathic or actively antisocial, she possesses an occasionally dim view of humanity that conveniently excuses her own (and severe) ethical missteps. The best uncomplicated feeling she can have for someone is respect, and that respect is the minimum prerequisite for her loyalty… that and a sense that one will contribute to her happiness and success. One on one she is pleasant, cheerful, even jocular, though always professional if the setting is professional - even deviations are to a larger purpose. In groups she is assertive without being overwhelming, and usually likes to use jokes to get attention rather than direct grabs for notice. The only real hint of her inner distance is her lack of close friends, and her lack of obvious weakness or vulnerability. It's not that she doesn't have her weaknesses, her doubts, her fears. It's that she almost never shares them. To do so would put her, in her mind, at a disadvantage.
The circumstances of Bella's life have made it harder and harder to retain an obviously cheerful mien. She's a consummate actress, in her own way, but concealing her feelings takes effort, and some feelings have grown too strong to suppress efficiently. For those who know her well enough, the 'real' Dr. Sheridan is a very wry, often snide, and above all else extremely cynical person. She never thought she had much in the way of ideals before, but her hostility towards generic idealism has only grown in the face of her ever-more-screwed-up-and-at-risk life. This has led her to seek out and open up primarily people who have no basis upon which to judge her, those who have transgressed sufficiently that her own transgressions appear equivalent or even mild by comparison.
Due to the various life-threatening situations she has lived through, and her lack of appropriate coping mechanisms, Bella temporarily developed a conversion disorder that caused psychosomatic pain in her leg. The origin of this condition was her first life-threatening trauma, when she was kidnapped and shot in the leg - it is from the location of the gunshot wound that the pain emanates. The disorder asserted itself when she feels she is losing control in a critical fashion, particularly when said loss of control relates to her personal safety and well being. She received some treatment for it, but extreme circumstances will still cause her to develop leg-weakness.
Inventory: Professional clothing and a purse containing: a wallet with paper money but no ID, a burner cellphone, a bottle of pepper-spray, a lighter and a cigarette case containing five high-grade marijuana cigarettes.
Abilities: Bella is a trained and licensed medical doctor with a speciality in psychiatric care. She is capable, intelligent and ruthless (if weak-willed). She has developed a number of theories regarding the interaction of human psychology and unprecedented super-powers, and has experience running highly-illegal but fairly successful covert medical trials on live human subjects. She is an urban survivor by dint of quick wits and charm as opposed to street-smarts, and has generally proven to be able to either make herself useful or seemingly harmless. She's also half-decent at Latin and has the breadth and range of general cultural and literary knowledge one would expect from a highly-educated child of the intellectual and professional middle class.
Flaws: To call Bella a villain is to overstate her commitment to evil. She is not evil due to any possession of a will to power or a desire to do harm, but rather due to a weakness of character. A pampered only child of the middle class, a member of the sacrosanct medical profession, a woman of remarkable intelligence and good looks but a underdeveloped moral character. It's not that she isn't capable of doing good, or wanting to do good - she threw herself into the task of helping the hordes of sick and injured after the nuclear detonation in Midtown, holds strong political convictions (particularly regarding the rights of women), and can be a fiercely loyal to those she loves - but she has shown herself capable time and time again of grave ethical breaches and shameless self-service at the expense of others, all while viewing herself as the victim more often than not.
To wit: she has experimented on live human subjects in the service of shadowy para-governmental agencies and abused her doctor/patient confidentiality in the interests of her employers as well as her own personal whims. She has lied and cried and weaseled her way out of receiving her just desserts, using charm and pity to create a defensive layer of others around herself, and to maintain mien of normality in a thoroughly messed up life. In truth, she is entirely capable of doing pretty much anything she thinks she can get away with, which means that when provided with sufficiently secrecy she could do just about anything. This doesn't mean that she will do anything just because she can - she's not an inhuman monster so much as human all too human (this, at least, is what she'd insist) - but given incentive, sufficient means of compartmentalization, an assurance that there will be no consequences for her, very little is beyond her. The fact that she was very early in her career recruited by a series of clandestine organizations gave her precisely the environment she needed to become the all-too-human monster she is.
She also has a penchant for light recreational drug use and is an unembarrassed cultural and intellectual snob. But these peccadillos tend to dim in comparison to her real crimes.
SAMPLES
AN ENTRY WRITTEN UPON DISCOVERING HER PRIVATE JOURNAL HAS BEEN READ BY ANOTHER
Should I be surprised? Why would you ever write down what you wouldn't want read? Why not just think it? However much I understand the sacredness of privacy, isn't the very act of committing something to paper at least flirting with the possibility of its being read by another? Like a suicide fantasy, eavesdropping at your own funeral, doesn't writing a journal entertain on some deep - I guess I have to call it unconscious - level the desire to have someone come upon it, open it and-?
But that's Vienna sausage filling. Yes, this was supposed to be read; it was supposed to be read by me. Secrets are still permitted, aren't they? It's an expression of my thoughts, the record of a process, and it should no more be available for perusal than my mind. I know I didn't want or anticipate this, because I'm so furious. And so ashamed.
That's the worst of it, really. The shame. I like myself. A great deal. I should not be ashamed. I should not feel bad about being as angry as I am. The world is fucked, my life is fucked, and I know I may well be part of the problem. What is easy about living, knowing you're as bad as you are? The blissful, righteous ignorance of these people, I would envy it if it didn't disgust me so. Brutality, inhumanity, treachery - I accept that this seems to be a common lot for many people, myself included. But to dress it up?
I got off topic. And I note, upon review, how it happened. Diagram of a defense mechanism: sense of guilt followed by justification, followed by self-critique and a consequent shifting of blame. Guilt transferred to others, synonymous with threat of exterior judgment. Self-critique pays for self awareness, a sacred virtue in psychological practice. Know yourself. Get better.
I'm Gretel the Cross-Sectioned Dairy Cow.
I don't want this for myself. I want to be better. I want to be good. I want to be fondly regarded and fondly remembered. And I cannot believe that this desire is synonymous with weakness, though some hard part of me insists that's so. She's a creature that knows no compromise, and I admire her and need her, but she'll kill me. Get me killed.
It can't be a matter of cowardice, though. It's about living for something, something besides living alone. Because it's unendurable, this existential dead weight. I don't know if that means I'd have to be willing to die for it, then, this thing to live for. I'm not sure I'm ready to put that question to myself. I can't honestly answer except in that very moment, after all. The burden of Sophie's choice isn't that you can't choose, but that you can, and you must suffer the wound of that knowledge. Only the incredible stress of such an event can reveal those hairline cracks, those fine but final distinctions.
I'll put that moment off as long as I can, thanks. There are times when I'm happy and I want things, rather than just wanting things not to be. There are enough of these moments and more than moments that I'm in no hurry to face a mortal choice.
I think now is the time to end this journal. If I start another, it will be in another volume, and it will be to some different purpose. As to whether I now know myself, it was arrogant even to presume. No one knows themselves by themselves - that is raison d'être of psychiatry. You cannot know yourself. Your only hope is to find someone who can.
I.S.
