whofrownedthisface

OOC Information
Player handle: jazzy

Contact details: AIM: bathrobeWerewolf

Time zone: """""""""UTC−05:00""""""""""""

Other characters: n/a

IC Information

Name:the Doctor

Nicknames/Alias: Basil McCrimmon. that might be a real name. it really probably isn't.

Age: i mean, it's a lot (canonically. in game, only normal human amounts)

Source canon: Doctor Who

Personality, or, 'How can he be a Doctor when he hasn't got any patience?': This iteration of the Doctor is a bit prickly and crotchety in comparison to some others, at least at face value. He is rude, prone to assigning flippant or needling nicknames, impatient, and prone to jumping to loud and erroneous conclusions. He is at least as curmudgeonly as the original, and has not much of a gift for human social niceties. He will talk over, under, and around people whose conversational contributions he feels are less important than his own (that's most of them) and in times of crisis (that's most of them) will assume an uncharmingly rational and utilitarian attitude towards circumstances, that seems to overlook the reality of human pain, or accept it as par for the course. In actuality he is aware of suffering, and with some prodding he can be induced to be more outwardly, appropriately sensitive. At a facile, observational level he may seem cold or uncaring, but this is a function of a drive to understand and solve mysteries combined with a very real and native social awkwardness. He's still the Doctor and he still feels every death and sacrifice keenly, possibly the most keenly yet of any incarnation.

Beneath the outwardly Doctory ego is a gross loamy underlayer of self-deprecation and guilt. He is aware, again possibly the most keenly aware he's been in all his lives, of his own worst tendencies, and has a healthy fear and despite for them. Which doesn't mean he won't call upon or reference those worst tendencies in a pinch, and whoever is doing the pinching should probably be worried about the possibility, particularly if there isn't someone conveniently placed to remind him of his goals and aspirations to a better nature, or if that someone is the person being threatened. He is aware, too, of what some people think of as his best qualities, but has, again to a perhaps unprecedented extent, externalised these qualities as a part of a Doctor-persona that he views as a role it is his duty and work to try to assume. This is a running theme, the trying. It's very important. "Clara: [to the Doctor] You asked me if you were a good man. And the answer is, I don't know. But I think you try to be. And I think that's probably the point."

Like many people who don't trust themselves and their emotions, he is allergic to sincerity and will weasel out of it with glibness or sharpness wherever possible. If presented with a human display of emotion, his natural response is to stare at it in mostly uncomprehending alarm. He feels affection but doesn't express it well, he values friendship but doesn't know how to do the real, gritty work of maintaining it, so when he does make an expression it may be grandiose, hamhanded, and/or inCREDibly poorly considered. If something is required or just wanted from him, it is best to spell it out very clearly, because left to his own emotional intelligence devices he will probably not make the right call. This emotional infacility extends to reading situational tone, sometimes verbal tone, and to a degree of faceblindness that cannot be explained away handily by species gap. Still, bad at people or not, he likes having them around, ostensibly to listen to his cleverness and laugh at his jokes, and he's certainly not at all hesitant to strike up with them, anywhere, any time, on any pretense.

He is still, of course, the Doctor, so he is clever, innovative, inventive, and generally good at problem solving. This particular incarnation adds to that a surprisingly organisationally-oriented mind, given to listing and diagramming and chalkboard-scrawling. He thinks out loud, and very quickly. He is prone to some degree of obsession, sometimes morbid, and will sometimes cite underlying logics and rationales that aren't there. This tendency towards morbid fascination and flight of fancy makes his response to fearful or strange circumstances sometimes inappropriately gleeful. When things are at their worst and weirdest, he is at his best.

This all goes for his canon personality, of course, but it is no less applicable for his AU. Because you don't have to be an alien to be bad at people. Isn't that heartwarming.

Canon history, or, 'This is the worst and most bullshit canon imaginable outside Homestuck, and inside Homestuck it's too dark to read.': Doctor Who is a weird British science fiction tv show that's been running approximately 9.5 billion years, encompassing portrayals by about nineteen actors, and with spin-off and extended universe media in formats that will baffle archaeologists millenia to come. This Doctor is taken from the end of series 8, when all that stuff had just happened, with cybermen, Missy's big reveal, and having to be president for like a few minutes. He is quite early into this regeneration and has just spent a conveniently television season sized chunk of time learning himself. He separated, tragically and mendaciously, from his current companion and then presumably moped around a lot until encountering Santa Claus. Things he will eventually remember: all that canonical business about being an alien with a stern and loving time-and-space-ship, who has adventures and stuff like all the time. Having been the last of his kind, but now not, maybe, probably? What humongous assholes Time Lords are and have always been, all the time, forever, throughout the entire history of reality, just huge butts, wow. And all those deeply meaningful and tragically fleeting humans he's toted around throughout all of it. Probably he'll remember some other stuff too.

AU Information

Appearance:

Cursed image.

The Doctor is tall, spindly at the ends, often unkemptly floofily haired, and has a face that's rather predisposed to glaring. It's the eyebrows, mainly. He has the potential to be very dignified and imposing, but generally isn't at all. He is very expressive, really just crams the whole gamut of what he's feeling in there pretty frequently, but with occasional bouts of terrifying inscrutability. He has horribly mobile spidery claw-hands that really sell the whole alien thing, despite belonging actually in real life to a real human, man, what is UP with that. Canonically he dresses only a little eccentrically this time around, bizarre moth-eaten sweaters, are those pajama pants? and ill-advised layering of hoodies, with a more formal yet magicianly get-up that puts in the occasional appearance particularly early on. He sort of vacillates between not-caring so much that it wraps back around into being almost teenagedly deliberate, and this shrugging-on of more officious clothing that represents assuming the Doctor role. He cleans up nicely and symbolically. In game, I feel that this will play out mostly the same way: not outlandishly much eccentricity, mostly time-appropriate, but frequently willfully shabby and with disregard for some of the stricter rules of conformity of the day. He does like a bit of drama from time to time. Luckily it looks like the upcoming season has some promise, in terms of time-appropriate costuming for this game.

This is fine, this is pretty normal.

And then it just. Things fall apart, okay?

Good, great, A+, this works.

Let me tell you, i get a lot of my clothing off a couch at my job, which shares a hallway with a t-shirt company that sets out their rejects and misprints as freebies, and even i know this is wrong.

but at least we have this to look forward to.

History: Of real actual for really realsies family, it can be assumed that the Doctor has one, somewhere, or did at some point. However, he isn't especially interested in elaborating on that overmuch. He has some markings of the upper class (obviously educated, equally obviously unfit to work, feels entitled to respect), but seems to have a marked disdain for them as well. Likewise, the military. Likewise, if we're being incautious, pretty much any government. And yet, isn't contempt born of familiarity? It's possible he comes however distantly from a noble, even titled, line. It's at least plausible that he served, isn't it? Where, when, what rank, try asking, see what he says, it isn't important. Whatever he's been, currently he is A) comfortably monied and B) unaffiliated in the truest etymological sense of the word. You get the feeling that whatever else he is, he is something of a black sheep, and proud of it. And why wouldn't he be, if he really does have high-falutin familial ties somewhere? He's a rebellious, cantankerous good-for-nothing who refuses on principle to apply himself in any upwardly mobile or socially driven way. Any family would be right to be disappointed. Which is all just to say, the Doctor is cagey and mysterious about his background. If he feels strong ties or wistfulness for any homeland, he keeps it mostly hidden, preferring a nomadic and off-leash lifestyle.

His less real actual family is, currently, Callie, though she's not aware of that less-than-real status. The Doctor, feeling a sense of kinship as well as immense moral outrage at her circumstance in life, may have forgotten to ever explain the truth behind the falsehoods and forgeries he had employed, finding her in her prior orphanage home during an investigation and posing as a long lost grandfather. Anyway who cares, the blood of the covenant etc etc blah blah that saying actually means the opposite of what everybody thinks it does. He takes his guardianship quite seriously, despite having taken on the responsibility on a bit of a whim, and not necessarily being incredibly well suited to the care and feeding of ~~wee green alien children~~ strange sad orphans. Or maybe he's just a bit rusty at the whole childcare thing, oooo mystery woooooo~

Job: The Doctor's """""career""""" is a little hard to pin down, as you might expect. Primarily he is...oh, a paranormal investigator, of sorts. But the truth is, in proper Scooby Doo fashion, all of what he turns up in his investigating is standard human shenanigans. Mostly perpetrated by standard humans, occasionally perpetrated by his own dang self. Because as much as he Wants to Believe (tm), sometimes if you want to investigate something that maybe isn't supernatural you have to fake a haunting or perform a perfunctory exorcism, or just break into something. Look, the ends justify the means, right? And you gotta occupy your time somehow, you know? It's not like he can be a real person, even in an AU where he's a real person. Though he might go off on wild and forebodingly gleeful tangents about lifting the veil or uncovering his childhood night-terrors, mostly he just enjoys finding interesting circumstances and involving himself in them, regardless of any potential for advancement of the aetheric sciences. Which are fakey-fake bullhonkey, anyway.

The Doctor is a very skilled inventor, but applies his skills in primarily useless ways: ""improved"" gadgetry that already exists, maybe the odd ghost trap, and naturally the intricate automata that were all the rage at the time, though that, given that a market exists for it, is a little too useful to hold his attention, and the most appreciated subject matter (birds in gilded cages, pretty ladies pouring tea, etc) too prosaic for his tastes, generally speaking. (The Golden Age of Automata, a real thing i did not make up that would have been just gearing up at the time, no pun intended. though they were primarily of French or Austrian make. Victorians were fuckin wild, anyway wyd)

Reason for coming to Lethevale: The Doctor is definitely someone who would have come here on purpose, gothic horror Gravity Falls has his name, whatever it is, written all over it. Pros: lots of cool shit and strange happenings to meddle in! Quaint rural environment for the edification of underprivileged orphans! (that's a thing, right? He's 87% sure.) Escaping any legal trouble he'd managed to land himself in in his previous environs! Cons: there aren't any, start packing. I may think up a more specific reason, but lbr i probs won't.

Inventory: There probably isn't anything specific, but being a man of ~~mystery~~ means he probably brought some shit. Traveling in a sentient episode of Hoarders probably translates to lots of projects in progress and other nonsense that might get carted around, at least on a trip that has the potential to run long.

Samples

Prose Sample:

The sun is a precarious egg-yolk on the horizon before the Doctor notices how late it's gotten. His shadow, already on the lean and stringy side, is even more tenuously stretched with the setting sun at his back. Warm and golden despite the autumn chill, but not for much longer. What time is dark proper, in this part of the world, in this part of the year? Wasn't there an almanac somewhere in all his luggage? Now there's something he ought to have checked before setting out to look for a """""witch's cottage"""" in the woods. Hindsight, etc. His saunter towards the aforementioned woods is, if anything, getting more saunter-y. It isn't like it's winter, so the light can hopefully be counted on to linger, and he is of course armed with a very clever folding lantern about the size and shape of a book, tucked away in his coat. So what does it matter? Woods are dark at the best of times, anyway, he rationalises. If things should really turn too cold and unnavigable, he can always make an impromptu camp. In the woods he has definitely not turned back from. Maybe in the witch's cottage he is definitely going to find, that absolutely will not contain an actual witch. People love a good hoarsely whispered rumour, and love ostracising little old ladies with herb gardens just as much, he expects. Come to think of it, he doesn't think the existence of a witch was even posited. Just a cottage. What would make it a witch's cottage without a witch, however, he refuses to hazard a guess.

So occupied with his less-than-charitable thoughts regarding witches, or at least their likely existence and probable mistreatment at the hands of their distant neighbours, he barely notices when he crosses into the woods. The path is not as well kept as it might be, which doesn't do any wonders for his speed. It's also possible, he will admit, that he's on the wrong one. The woods are as full of melancholy blue darkness as he'd anticipated, and only getting more so as the evening progresses. But even as the light dies the woods come alive to a different sense entirely; the air is full of the sounds of night birds, frogs and surprisingly noisy falling acorns. Enough noise to camouflage the occasional snapping twig or crunching leaf, at least until they become too intent to ignore. The Doctor pauses in the act of clambering over an assortment of fallen limbs, visibly unsettled by a particularly sharp and unmistakable footfall. Perhaps he should have stopped and lit the lantern; what a shame the saying never specified any statistics on hindsight's night vision. Whatever is watching him from the woods, with chilling green eyes, however--that probably has pretty good night vision, actually. He manages to clamber down from the fallen branch without breaking eye-contact or his ankle, looking more scandalised and less terrified than the situation really calls for. Wolves shouldn't be a threat, this time of year. Perhaps this one had forgotten to check its almanac. New lamplight eyes are becoming visible in the darkness every second, one pair for every now-obvious mistake that had led to this circumstance, and that certainly feels threatening.

What else is there to do but run? So he does, even knowing he was never built with the capacity to seriously outrun wolves, even knowing that the chances of finding a conveniently scaleable tree or armed reinforcements are slimmer than he wants to calculate at a run. Maybe it's like bee swarms and he can find a deep lake. Maybe that witch's cottage is nearer than he thought. As a, possibly literally, last resort he hares into the woods and off the path, in what he hopes is the direction of town.

The Doctor suspects the wolves are pacing him, hoping to tire him out; which, if so, it's a great strategy, good job, wolves. Textbook cursorial hunting. He's already panting miserably and running flat-footed with exhaustion. He's starting to consider a new strategy of just turning around abruptly and yelling a lot when he sees something in the dark up ahead--an even darker gap, leading into God knows what. A low hovel, a cave, maybe a mausoleum, it's not like he's going to say no, whatever it is. With a whoop of inappropriate joy he dives for the mysterious entrance, half convinced he can feel teeth clipping together close behind, and comes to a rolling, heaped stop inside. He scrambles for the back, already scraping for leaf litter and fumbling for matches. He knew he wasn't going to be wolf food tonight! If he can just get something of a fire together, they're bound to give up and look for something less complicated.

The wolves seem reluctant to advance, which would be curious, if he weren't so busy. There's enough litter to get a tiny blaze going, and he finally breaks out the pocket lantern too, revealing...not much, actually. A sloping, shallow tunnel, maybe a large burrow, maybe a barrow, maybe none of those, but whatever it is, it's deep. He'd love to explore, but he's probably met his quota for bad decisions today. There's just enough light to make out uneasily pacing shapes outside; he reevaluates his makeshift shelter--possibly a bear's winter home? That would explain it. He settles in for a long night.

(im not finishing this, but i'll tell you what, it's not a bear and you can't prove it's not local.)

Test Drive: here

Misc.

Additional Links: Maybe worth checking out: a previous permissions post

Anything else: laura says i have to say he's Scottish