[ ooc; application: asgard eventide ]

[thoughts]

OOC Information;

Name; Faith
Personal Journal; varooooom
Contact; saucesome [at] yahoo [dot] com | varooooom
Other Characters; half the NPC team lbr here
Activity proof; bazinga!

IC Information;

Character Name; River Tam
Canon; Firefly/Serenity
Canon Point; post-Firefly, pre-Serenity
Age; seventeen.

House; Odin
Power; Ice

Personality; River is ... complicated. Before she went to the Academy, she was bright minded, outgoing and despite the burden of her "gift," she lived well with it. Everything was fun, a challenge for her to overcome, and overcoming them was as easy as breathing. She loved playing with her genius brother and schooling him, despite being several years younger than him. She loved reading and learning, but above all else, she loved to dance.

But her gift made it made it too easy to learn, which is why she agreed to go to the Academy for some "higher learning." It was supposed to be an opportunity for her to excel ahead of her class, but all they really did was experiment on her to bend and break her mind, shaping it to be a weapon for the Alliance. There's a disconnect between reality and her mind now, because after two years of them slicing into her brain and forcing her through excruciating experiments and conditioning, her abilities grew beyond her and consumed her.

She was fourteen when she went into the Academy. She was sixteen when Simon got her out. But, for all intents and purposes, her mentality is more like that of a child. River was never given the chance to develop naturally, and with her mind left in tatters, the girl was ruined. She goes through periods of coherency where she is still curious and playful with the world around her, always eager to explore and experience and dance. But then she'll slip into madness on the drop of dime, with or without a trigger, and lose any sense of calm or normalcy. The things she says can vary from speaking technical jargon very few can understand to a childish sort of innocence and sincerity to absolute nonsense that doesn't even make sense to her.

One of the hardest things for her to deal with is that the Academy essentially lobotomized one part of her brain - repeatedly - rendering her entirely incapable of controlling her emotions. When she's happy, it's a blissful, untenable thing. When she's sad, it's complete anguish and misery. And when she's frightened, she's a danger to herself and those around her, and she's afraid of damn near everything: the things she knows, the things she hears and sees, the very nature of her being; it all terrifies her. In Serenity, she told Simon to "put a bullet to her" because she couldn't handle it anymore. River knows how damaged she is, how much of a burden she's become, and though she tries to control it, she's physically incapable of doing so.

Even still, River is clever and smart, inquisitive and adventurous. She loves to play games, and despite being able to understand the most complex of theoretical physics, she is baffled and awed by things like childbirth and sports. She still wants to learn, even if she can't make sense of what she's learning. She loves bright colors and walking around with no shoes just to feel the earth beneath her feet. The concept of space and the vast expanse of stars is one of the most beautiful things in existence.

Other things worth noting: she is very logic-oriented. Physics comes easily to her because they're laws that are defined and proven, concepts that make sense. She tries to apply the same thing to everything else in an effort to understand this great big universe around her. She picks things apart and tries to rationalize them - like Shepherd Book's Bible, for instance. River read through it and tore out pages, scribbled out passages and corrected the text because "it doesn't make sense, it's wrong." The concept of faith and belief is beyond her; she only sees gears in a machine, what makes things go 'round.

But that doesn't mean her view of the world is entirely logical at all. River tends to think of things in circles and colors, shapes and noises, almost like the universe is one big piece of art and she's trying to connect the dots. She sees things in metaphors and riddles, a near poetic sort of nonsense that usually leaves people completely baffled but makes sense in her own strange mind. Here's a visual representation of how she thinks: a panel from the comic Serenity: Better Days, when asked what her dream would be if she had limitless wealth. Yeah, I have no clue what to tell you there. That's just River.

She also really, really does not like violence. She's easily startled by people and weapons, despite being proficient at handling both. If anything, the training she went through at the Academy only made her hate violence more. But she is still highly skilled, and has proven to take action where it's needed in eliminating the enemy and protecting the crew. During these moments, she tends to turn away, like when she shot Niska's men in War Stories. She didn't want to do it, and she didn't want to see it, so she shut it out. I believe that when River goes into battle, she shuts down everything else and sort of goes into a trance where she lets her body move as it needs to in order to resolve the situation without actually thinking about the damage she's doing. It's easier to just shut it out and act as she was trained to do.

River hates wearing boots. She loves Simon more than breathing. She likes Mal because he doesn't pity her or fear her, she's just another member of the crew. She doesn't understand the concept of personal space and her humor tends to lean towards the morbid and mean, but it's all in good fun. River won't sleep because without her amygdala, there's nothing to hold back the nightmares and the memories and the pain, so she's a mentally unstable insomniac that can kick the ass of thirty grown men three times her size. Everything's a game to her, and she'd really like some semblance of normalcy, even if she doesn't know what constitutes "normal" anymore.

River is still in there underneath all the mess, and she fights to find her every single day.

Just. Some days are harder than others. And others are impossible. It's a work in progress.

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