[OOC] Application
Apr. 28th, 2012 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
good_enoughPlayer: RM
E-mail: ishidaaaugh@gmail.com
Journal/Plurk:galatea / katoptron @ plurk
Time Zone: EST
Team Preferences: None really!
Character Name: Dr. Claire Saunders
Canon: Dollhouse
Reference Link: http://dollhouse.wikia.com/wiki/Claire_Saunders
Character History: In the not-so-distant future, the Rossum Corporation developed technology that allowed them to wipe the personalities of people, leaving the resulting empty “doll” to be imprinted with any persona that the programmer might choose. The first thing Rossum decides to do with all of this tech is to create the Dollhouses: underground bunkers housing tens of Actives/Dolls, each one ready to be programmed and sent out on engagements. Sometimes this means being a super spy or even an ultra-awesome orphanage volunteer; unfortunately it usually means the doll gets to be an ultra-hooker custom tailored to whatever the client might possibly want. And since the Dolls have no personality of their own, they don’t have any say in what happens to them. To say that the Dollhouse is morally ambiguous is a massive, massive understatement. (To say that the series itself is problematic is also a massive, massive understatement.)
Claire Saunders was one of these Actives. Presumably something brought her to the Dollhouse and placed her in a position to sign away her identity for five years; however, as the character never looks for this information herself, the series also never details exactly who Claire was before she was a Doll. She adopted the codename Whiskey and, for a while, was the number one Active in the House. However, one of the other Actives in the House, Alpha, was jealous of Whiskey’s popularity, obsessing instead over another Doll he had deemed as being “special”: Echo. In order to make it so that Echo would be the number one Active, he heavily scarred Whiskey’s face and then (after a composite event that shoved several personalities into him) went on a killing spree, which included murdering the in-House physician. Whiskey survived these events but emerged terribly scarred, both physically and mentally. Faced with a broken Doll and a dead physician, the House decided to imprint Whiskey with a new, long-term persona: Dr. Claire Saunders, a physician devoted to keeping the Dolls safe.
Claire lived in the Dollhouse for several months like this, not even suspecting her former identity as Whiskey. This all changed when Alpha returned to House to kidnap Echo. He cornered Claire and asked her if she had always wanted to be a doctor. This caused Claire to question her identity for the first time. In the aftermath of Alpha’s attacks, her suspicions were confirmed: she was originally a Doll, with her identity as Claire Saunders being a constructed Persona. She lashed out against the programmer who had made her personality at first, seeking to provoke a reaction first by scaring him and then attempting to sleep with him. Ultimately, though, she recognized that hating the programmer was just an excuse; if she wanted to find an identity outside of being a Doll, then she needed to leave the Dollhouse. She did so, spending a few months in the care of Boyd … who turned out to be the semi-evil head of the Rossum Corporation. Oops. He was almost certainly responsible for taking her back to them, where she was imprinted with “sleeper” coding - a word or phrase that would compel her to carry out a specific task. Which meant killing a programmer inside the Dollhouse. She was later erased again, this time imprinted with an evil AI that was helping run the evil corporation trying to bring about the apocalypse. Long story short: the corporation failed in the short term but won in the long term, Claire was eventually returned to “her” body, and all hell broke loose. Claire is specifically being apped from sometime during the events shown in Epitaph One, but before giving up her Claire Saunders identity for good.
Personality:
For the most part, Claire is an exceedingly calm person. Her comments are deadpan 90% of the time, even if she’s expressing gentle concern rather than sarcasm. It’s rare for her to act out of rash emotion - she’s the type to carefully think things through if she has enough time to do so. In fact, she often thinks through scenarios using angles that some of her coworkers miss. She is always devoted to the welfare of her charges first, providing a much-needed balance to Topher’s amorality. (He designed her to fulfill that exact role, in fact. But details.) Despite her calm demeanor, however, Claire doesn’t hold up to certain kinds of pressure very well. Political or social pressure? Certainly. Physical or threatening pressure? Not so much. If sufficiently frightened, she will bend to the person (or thing) threatening her; the violence of the games will likely also be highly unpleasant until she can harden herself to them. Her behavior in games will be walking a thin line between the need to protect and the need not to get chopped up in a horrible murder game.
That said, Claire isn’t just calm and patient and sarcastic. Her calm exterior hides an interior that is very anxious, especially in the wake of all the identity crises following the revelation that she was actually a doll. She has quite a few phobias, including inabilities to deal with crowds, open spaces, pets, sunlight, etc. But even more than that, she finds herself adrift in a body that isn’t really hers, with a personality that was created by someone else - and yet she’s too afraid of dying to give it up. What mental recovery she made outside of the Dollhouse was broken down again by Boyd’s betrayal and erasing to make room for the evil AI. Her trust of anyone will be very low, even for those on her own team. She also tends to have bad coping mechanisms in general: trying to sleep with Topher, going off on another Doll with the same scars as her, being tempted to cut up Echo, etc. Ultimately, she views herself as being broken, without much to build her back into being an actual person again.
Writing Sample:
01. If given a choice, what would you like to be called?
… that’s an important question, isn’t it. Dr. Saunders. Please.
02. Do you require socks to be part of your uniform?
As long as I have something on my feet.
03. Not including mandatory periods of silence, what is the longest you have gone without talking?
That depends on what you define as “talking.” I speak with the Actives when I see them, of course. It comforts them to know that their physician cares about their wellbeing. But I wouldn’t say I have conversations with them either. Sometimes I go an entire week without speaking to anyone who can really speak back.
04. Are you plagued by suspicions that other people, including coworkers and relatives, may be doing things behind your back that will hurt you?
I work in an institution that is specifically designed to erase, modify and imprint people. What do you think?
05. Other than a large egret, what wild animal would you like to domesticate?
I’m really not very fond of animals. Egrets included.
06. Are you functionally incapacitated by witnessing other people's misery?
I would be deeply concerned if anyone didn’t answer yes to this. With a few exceptions - I gave up being concerned for them a long time ago.
07. What is your favorite flatware for, purely as an example, eating cake? Just a plain plate is fine, thank you.
08. Do you trust yourself? I … I don’t know how to answer this. I don’t trust the person who made me, or the personality traits that he - he made me from. I have to second guess every thought I have, every word I say. But I can’t be anyone else either. Perhaps … perhaps refusing to let go is a lack of trust, when you get down to it.
09. Please list a crime that only you would know that you have committed. I’ve hacked into the House mainframes a few times. Given out illegal amounts of prescription drugs. But considering the first was about information I had the right to access and the second happened after the world started to end … I think I can be excused.
10. If you disappeared tomorrow would anyone miss you? … I’m not sure. I like to think they would, but I’ve disappeared before. It would probably be best if they didn’t.
E-mail: ishidaaaugh@gmail.com
Journal/Plurk:
galatea / katoptron @ plurkTime Zone: EST
Team Preferences: None really!
Character Name: Dr. Claire Saunders
Canon: Dollhouse
Reference Link: http://dollhouse.wikia.com/wiki/Claire_Saunders
Character History: In the not-so-distant future, the Rossum Corporation developed technology that allowed them to wipe the personalities of people, leaving the resulting empty “doll” to be imprinted with any persona that the programmer might choose. The first thing Rossum decides to do with all of this tech is to create the Dollhouses: underground bunkers housing tens of Actives/Dolls, each one ready to be programmed and sent out on engagements. Sometimes this means being a super spy or even an ultra-awesome orphanage volunteer; unfortunately it usually means the doll gets to be an ultra-hooker custom tailored to whatever the client might possibly want. And since the Dolls have no personality of their own, they don’t have any say in what happens to them. To say that the Dollhouse is morally ambiguous is a massive, massive understatement. (To say that the series itself is problematic is also a massive, massive understatement.)
Claire Saunders was one of these Actives. Presumably something brought her to the Dollhouse and placed her in a position to sign away her identity for five years; however, as the character never looks for this information herself, the series also never details exactly who Claire was before she was a Doll. She adopted the codename Whiskey and, for a while, was the number one Active in the House. However, one of the other Actives in the House, Alpha, was jealous of Whiskey’s popularity, obsessing instead over another Doll he had deemed as being “special”: Echo. In order to make it so that Echo would be the number one Active, he heavily scarred Whiskey’s face and then (after a composite event that shoved several personalities into him) went on a killing spree, which included murdering the in-House physician. Whiskey survived these events but emerged terribly scarred, both physically and mentally. Faced with a broken Doll and a dead physician, the House decided to imprint Whiskey with a new, long-term persona: Dr. Claire Saunders, a physician devoted to keeping the Dolls safe.
Claire lived in the Dollhouse for several months like this, not even suspecting her former identity as Whiskey. This all changed when Alpha returned to House to kidnap Echo. He cornered Claire and asked her if she had always wanted to be a doctor. This caused Claire to question her identity for the first time. In the aftermath of Alpha’s attacks, her suspicions were confirmed: she was originally a Doll, with her identity as Claire Saunders being a constructed Persona. She lashed out against the programmer who had made her personality at first, seeking to provoke a reaction first by scaring him and then attempting to sleep with him. Ultimately, though, she recognized that hating the programmer was just an excuse; if she wanted to find an identity outside of being a Doll, then she needed to leave the Dollhouse. She did so, spending a few months in the care of Boyd … who turned out to be the semi-evil head of the Rossum Corporation. Oops. He was almost certainly responsible for taking her back to them, where she was imprinted with “sleeper” coding - a word or phrase that would compel her to carry out a specific task. Which meant killing a programmer inside the Dollhouse. She was later erased again, this time imprinted with an evil AI that was helping run the evil corporation trying to bring about the apocalypse. Long story short: the corporation failed in the short term but won in the long term, Claire was eventually returned to “her” body, and all hell broke loose. Claire is specifically being apped from sometime during the events shown in Epitaph One, but before giving up her Claire Saunders identity for good.
Personality:
For the most part, Claire is an exceedingly calm person. Her comments are deadpan 90% of the time, even if she’s expressing gentle concern rather than sarcasm. It’s rare for her to act out of rash emotion - she’s the type to carefully think things through if she has enough time to do so. In fact, she often thinks through scenarios using angles that some of her coworkers miss. She is always devoted to the welfare of her charges first, providing a much-needed balance to Topher’s amorality. (He designed her to fulfill that exact role, in fact. But details.) Despite her calm demeanor, however, Claire doesn’t hold up to certain kinds of pressure very well. Political or social pressure? Certainly. Physical or threatening pressure? Not so much. If sufficiently frightened, she will bend to the person (or thing) threatening her; the violence of the games will likely also be highly unpleasant until she can harden herself to them. Her behavior in games will be walking a thin line between the need to protect and the need not to get chopped up in a horrible murder game.
That said, Claire isn’t just calm and patient and sarcastic. Her calm exterior hides an interior that is very anxious, especially in the wake of all the identity crises following the revelation that she was actually a doll. She has quite a few phobias, including inabilities to deal with crowds, open spaces, pets, sunlight, etc. But even more than that, she finds herself adrift in a body that isn’t really hers, with a personality that was created by someone else - and yet she’s too afraid of dying to give it up. What mental recovery she made outside of the Dollhouse was broken down again by Boyd’s betrayal and erasing to make room for the evil AI. Her trust of anyone will be very low, even for those on her own team. She also tends to have bad coping mechanisms in general: trying to sleep with Topher, going off on another Doll with the same scars as her, being tempted to cut up Echo, etc. Ultimately, she views herself as being broken, without much to build her back into being an actual person again.
Writing Sample:
01. If given a choice, what would you like to be called?
… that’s an important question, isn’t it. Dr. Saunders. Please.
02. Do you require socks to be part of your uniform?
As long as I have something on my feet.
03. Not including mandatory periods of silence, what is the longest you have gone without talking?
That depends on what you define as “talking.” I speak with the Actives when I see them, of course. It comforts them to know that their physician cares about their wellbeing. But I wouldn’t say I have conversations with them either. Sometimes I go an entire week without speaking to anyone who can really speak back.
04. Are you plagued by suspicions that other people, including coworkers and relatives, may be doing things behind your back that will hurt you?
I work in an institution that is specifically designed to erase, modify and imprint people. What do you think?
05. Other than a large egret, what wild animal would you like to domesticate?
I’m really not very fond of animals. Egrets included.
06. Are you functionally incapacitated by witnessing other people's misery?
I would be deeply concerned if anyone didn’t answer yes to this. With a few exceptions - I gave up being concerned for them a long time ago.
07. What is your favorite flatware for, purely as an example, eating cake? Just a plain plate is fine, thank you.
08. Do you trust yourself? I … I don’t know how to answer this. I don’t trust the person who made me, or the personality traits that he - he made me from. I have to second guess every thought I have, every word I say. But I can’t be anyone else either. Perhaps … perhaps refusing to let go is a lack of trust, when you get down to it.
09. Please list a crime that only you would know that you have committed. I’ve hacked into the House mainframes a few times. Given out illegal amounts of prescription drugs. But considering the first was about information I had the right to access and the second happened after the world started to end … I think I can be excused.
10. If you disappeared tomorrow would anyone miss you? … I’m not sure. I like to think they would, but I’ve disappeared before. It would probably be best if they didn’t.
