Post by DR. BENEDICT MILNER on Jul 13, 2012 21:32:24 GMT -5
...benedict theophilius milner *
* Why is a raven like a writing-desk? *
[/size]* Why is a raven like a writing-desk? *
...basics*
name Benedict Theophilius Milner
nickname Though he is usually addressed by his patients as Dr. Milner, by his friends, he will accept the nickname Ben. His parents called him Benny when he was very young, and at one point in his university career, he went through a phase where he wanted to be addressed as Theo. However, Benedict is really just fine with him nowadays.
age 30
gender Male
occupation Psychiatrist
hometown Hertfordshire, England
sexuality Pansexual
personification The Mad Hatter
status Presently dormant, though the fragility of his dormancy is slowly becoming more and more compromised.
face claim Benedict Cumberbatch
...appearance*
hair color His natural color is a sort of auburn red, and quite curly, but he does occasionally dye it darker. During university, he bleached it. Most of the time, however, he prefers to be a ginger.
eye color Frankly indescribable. In different lights, his eyes can look blue, green, gray, or even almost hazel.
build Tall and thin, but he does work out.
height 6’ even.
clothing style In the workplace, fairly professional, although he tends to wear suits with mildly unusual patterns and/or colors. He’s fond of scarves, double-breasted coats, and gloves. Outside the workplace, his appearance can be more casual – a well-washed t-shirt and jeans is about as grungy as he gets, however. He also has a pair of reading glasses that he wears when he’s – well – reading.
distinctive traits Lips cheekbones hair hands eyes – his whole face is one big distinctive trait.
...personal*
personality
Benedict Milner has always been empathetic to a fault. He is exceedingly kind – he believes in the concept of helping people for the sake of helping, world peace, altruism, etc. Though he is a realist, he tends to look at the glass half-full instead of half-empty, and essentially believes that people are inherently good, instead of inherently bad. There’s a little good in everyone, or so Ben thinks, and he tries his hardest to see it, even in people who don’t want him to. He has a fairly good sense of self-esteem, and he encourages others to see themselves in a better light; in fact, he wants everyone to be able to see the good that he sees in people. He is, however, not overly trusting – again, he is realistic about humanity, as well – and as a psychiatrist, it is very difficult to play him.
Speaking of which, Benedict is a very, very good psychiatrist. He’s warm, friendly, and encouraging. There’s a sort of aura about him that just makes people open up to him, something almost parental. Maybe it’s his smile, or the way his eyes are so genuinely attentive, the way he doesn’t miss a word you say. Whatever it is, even outside the office, people frequently come to him for advice. He’s perceptive almost to a fault. He misses almost nothing in other people – though, surprisingly, he tends to be completely oblivious when people have romantic feelings for him.
However, there are downsides to Benedict’s knack for observation. Being as analytical as he is, it’s hard for him not to break things down all the way, and sometimes he can get remarkably carried away with his analyses to the point of either digging up something he shouldn’t touch or else just offending someone who came to him for simple advice. It’s also a bit of an issue that he is often blunt in his observations, outright telling the other person what he thinks the problem is – and more often than not, he’s right. Being able to see the flaws and faults of everyone he speaks to, being able to deduce emotional trauma from word use or body language, can be insulting to some people, especially when he’s so straightforward about it.
Not that he doesn’t have tact. Benedict just believes in a fairly direct approach most of the time. Of course, he can tell when he needs to be sensitive. He’s very insightful and responsive to outside stimuli. In fact, he’s polite and generally pleasant to be around – it’s just the occasional slip-up with his tendency for overanalysis that gets him in trouble sometimes, with friends, significant others, etcetera.
Though he can unwittingly be a bit of a know-it-all, in general, Benedict’s wit and dry sense of humor tend to draw people to him. He’s amusing, and he seems to be content with the world and himself, a sense of security that people seem to flock to. However, though he is by no means antisocial, he does like to have his space and spend time by himself. He’s an intellectual, fonder of books than of watching sports on television. He’s also a bit of a traditionalist; he’s chivalrous, believes in books over eReaders, and likes to do things the right way instead of the easy way. He likes to take things relatively slow. Eager to learn new things, he is very knowledgeable, and he gets a bit upset when there’s something in his path he can’t overcome due to a lack of knowledge. He is also incredibly fixated on fixing things, be they people, problems, or anything of the sort. He was always known as the mediator in any group of friends he was a part of, the one who didn’t take sides and was capable of keeping his cool in the most emotionally charged situations. Ben puts a lot of effort into the things he’s determined to fix, and he gets frustrated when he runs across something he can’t. Of course, it takes a lot to frustrate Benedict. He is persistent, and above all else, he is incredibly stubborn. He’ll stick it out to the end, no matter how much it hurts. When he gets emotionally invested in something (which happens more often than perhaps he’d like), he will fight to the death in its name. The good doctor has a reputation as a very hard worker.
Benedict is a sweet man. He’s a bit bumbling sometimes with words and interactions, slightly on the socially awkward side, and sometimes he just does outright silly things without noticing (like putting on his clothes backwards, which happens a lot), but in general, he’s an affectionate friend. He’s almost always ready to take the fall for someone else or assume the blame for a disaster, and he is very dutiful towards the people he cares about. Ben is driven by an urge to protect people that he’s close to – in fact, he’s just driven by an urge to protect everyone. He has a natural instinct that’s really more Mama Bear than Papa Bear, more soft than snarly, more cuddly than ferocious, but still defending. It’s a nickname he’s earned a few times over the years. In a group, he tends to be both leader and guardian; he’s assertive, somewhat of a natural leader, but he isn’t bossy and doesn’t push to get his way unless he’s really set on it.
Another aspect of his personality, stemming from his Mama Bear instincts, is his chronic worrying. Benedict is a worrier. He worries all the time, about too many things (mostly people). He is the first to get anxious about a friend when they call him late at night. Though he has a good grip on himself and a generally optimistic perspective, he can’t help just worrying all the time. When he gets nervous, it gets harder for him to keep his cool. Still, his self-control is remarkable; still, he’s one of those people who can smile at you on the outside while he’s falling to pieces on the inside. Though he is a psychiatrist and understands that it’s important to talk about his problems, he tends to put other people’s problems before his own. He is ruthlessly selfless in nature, but it’s led him to become just a bit more distant from the outside world than perhaps he should be.
One of the things he worries about the most is, ironically, his own mental health. Because his mother had schizophrenia, and because Benedict knows that mental illness can be hereditary, he is frightened almost every day of his life (whether he shows it or not) that he will someday discover that he has schizophrenia as well. It’s the one thing that gets to him the most, the one thing that drives him mad just thinking about it. There’s nothing he can do about it, and feeling helpless is a feeling he hates more than any other.
And with the Hatter slowly awakening, his sanity is looking more and more fragile.
past
On October the 6th, after many years of failed attempts, Arthur and Linda Milner were at last graced with a bright-eyed baby boy with a shock of red hair. They named him Benedict Theophilius – Benedict being the name they had chosen long beforehand, and Theophilius being the name of the child’s great-grandfather, the man who had started the family business that allowed young Benedict to come into a world of comfort, bordering on luxury.
The Milners were wealthy. They weren’t particularly old money and they weren’t rich enough to have a private island or anything that elaborate. They had a summer home along the coast and a nice, old Victorian-style house with a grand backyard. Benedict grew up slightly sheltered, perhaps, but happy – his life in his big house was pleasant, and there was always more to explore. When he was five, his parents bought him an Irish Setter puppy named Rufus, a dog that would be his constant companion throughout most of his childhood.
From the outside, the Milner household seemed perfect. Arthur and Linda loved each other, they both loved their son, and their son loved them. Benedict was a clever child, witty, civil, remarkably well-behaved. He was always a bit of a chatterbox, but beyond that, his parents couldn’t ask for a better son. And so things seemed to proceed normally – his father executed the family business, largely from home, and his mother kept house.
However, everything was not as perfect as it seemed, as is so often the case.
Benedict’s mother was frequently away. As a child, he didn’t know why this was. For as long as he could remember, his mother was always “taking vacations,” going away for months at a time while his father stayed home to take care of him and offer some sort of explanation for her absence. She was visiting her sister, she was going to the shore, she was going to Germany to see her family. Each time, Benedict, who was very attached to his mother, would cling to Rufus and ask, “Why can’t we come with her?”
His father would smile sadly and ruffle his hair. “Don’t worry, Benny,” he’d say, “she’ll be back soon.” And that was all the more explanation he received.
What he didn’t know was that his mother’s “vacations” were frequent stays at surrounding mental hospitals. Linda Milner was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Arthur, attempting to preserve his reputation and keep his wife’s private affairs private, never revealed to neither his son nor his friends the true reason behind her disappearances.
This all went along smoothly for some time. Benedict didn’t notice his mother’s worse days because he was too young, and Benedict’s father kept him away from her during those periods of time as much as he could, encouraging his son to get out of the house and go play in the backyard with Rufus. In general, though the system was fundamentally corrupt – Arthur simultaneously keeping his young son oblivious and his wife’s condition a secret – it continued without so much as a hitch for seven years.
Shortly after Benedict’s seventh birthday, Arthur had an aneurysm. He was dead almost instantly. Rather abruptly, Linda, mentally unstable but goodhearted, was left alone in their big house with their young son and his dog.
She tried. She really did. She tried desperately to be good for Benedict, be mentally fit to mother him, but without Arthur’s guiding hand and with her delusions and depression steadily increasing in intensity, she was simply incapable. Rather all at once, Benedict realized that there was something wrong with his mother, that she wasn’t okay, that maybe she had never been okay. She saw and heard things that weren’t there and she cried a lot. She clung to his father’s favorite bowler hat like a rosary, the hat he’d been wearing when he died; she never let it out of her sight, slept with it, never wore it, but kept it with her always.
Suddenly, Benedict became the man of the house – he went from being loved and coddled so affectionately by his parents and his relatives to being the sole caretaker of his ailing mother. It was hard; he was far too young for the responsibility, but he rose to the task as best he could. He learned how to make food and put himself to bed. He learned how to take care of Rufus by himself. And all the while, he tried as hard as he could to comfort his mother – but as a seven-year-old, there was very little he could do.
This went on for a year. Benedict turned eight, and he thought desperately to himself that perhaps things were going to be okay, perhaps he could manage to support his mother forever, perhaps everything was going to be fine.
And then the one-year anniversary of Arthur’s death came.
Benedict was conscious of the date, all-too-conscious. He and his mother had been planning to visit his father’s grave, lay some flowers. The day before, she’d kissed his head and held him before she went to bed, cooing to him, saying how sorry she was, how much she wished she was a real mother. He’d been confused, holding her in response, asking her what was wrong, but she hadn’t said. She’d cried herself to sleep that night with Benedict in her arms.
And then, the afternoon of the one-year anniversary of his father’s death, Benedict came into his mother’s room to fetch her for their trip to Arthur’s grave to find Linda standing in the center of the bedroom, a bedsheet noose around her neck tied to the ceiling fan, standing on a stool, Arthur’s hat clutched in her hands. She was shaking with her tears. Benedict’s eyes widened, but he was rooted to the spot, incapable of moving. Then, Linda closed her eyes, tossed the bowler hat to her son, and kicked the stool out from under her.
Benedict remained immobile for a good minute after his mother had fallen, watching, paralyzed with fear, as she thrashed about madly, legs kicking, choking, face turning blue. He would regret that minute for the rest of his life.
Then he rushed forward, grabbing at her legs, pulling, trying to get the chair back under her feet, but she was too heavy and it was too late. He hadn’t been able to save his mother. And he wasn’t able to forgive himself for that.
After his mother’s death, Benedict was sent to live with his grandmother, Evangeline – his father’s mother. His grandmother placed him in therapy almost immediately, sensing the effect that the unexpected shock of the suicide would have on her grandson. It was Evangeline’s swift action that kept Benedict from withdrawing entirely, as so many children do, and probably what saved him from a life of self-hatred and depression. He was deeply torn up by his mother’s suicide – for many years, he thought it was his fault. Sometimes, he still does, but he’s been trying all this time to forgive himself.
Still, for a period in his life, he was very sad. He didn’t play with the other children as much. He had trouble connecting. But eventually, he was fortunate enough to find some teachers and peers to reach out to him and draw him, just a little, from his shell.
As Benedict developed physically and intellectually and began to recover from the deaths of both his parents, he started to research his mother’s condition. He wanted to know what, how, why, why she felt the need to take her own life. He was desperate to know what her life had been like, why she had been sent away so many times – and when he discovered they were trips to mental hospitals, he felt a burning resentment towards the father he had always loved that would last into his university years.
Regardless, the more his lust for information grew, the deeper into psychology he delved, and the more fascinated he became. For sixth form school, he was sent to boarding school by his grandmother, a wealthy widow who actually had enough money to send him to a good one. There, he made friends and continued his studies in medicine and psychology. He got very good grades – for a teenager, he had a shockingly good work ethic – and ultimately discovered the ambiguity of his sexuality, something that would trouble him well into his university years.
Benedict’s grandmother was kind, but she was also strict. When he was home, he wasn’t allowed to stay out late or go anywhere without telling her. His boarding school always phoned home whenever students got into trouble, so Ben learned to be very good very fast, as his grandmother did not tolerate disobedience. She raised him to have impeccable good manners and instilled in him many of the traditionalist values that he has kept to this day. Ben knew that this was for his own good, but at the same time, he found her way of raising him thoroughly oppressive at times, and this eventually catapulted him into a rebellious stage during his time at university. He dyed his hair blonde, asked people to address him as Theo (after his middle name, Theophilius) , messed around with both boys and girls, and did a few experimental drugs – he even got a tattoo. However, he sobered up after a while; impulsivity was not a good fit for him, he found. Thus, he settled further into his sense of true self, coming to terms with his pansexuality, deciding to make psychology his career in order to prevent things like his mother’s suicide from happening.
And so he went to medical school.
He decided that he would go to America, to Johns Hopkins (to which he was, in fact, accepted) to get his medical degree. The decision was in part to get away from his life in England; his grandmother was old and ailing by then, but she had Benedict’s cousins to care for her, and he wanted to get away from her influence, get a fresh start somewhere new. He didn’t know why, completely, but life in England was getting oppressive. So he left. He got his degree in America, he got a job in America, he opened a practice in New York City. Though he had always been the type to take the slower path, something about the foreign city’s fast pace was exciting. He was drawn to it, and it to him.
present
Benedict is now a successful young psychiatrist operating in New York City, with an astoundingly good reputation. Though he’s only been there for a few years, he’s already had many successes with his patients insofar and is living comfortably in a small apartment in a nice part of the city. He likes having just enough space to live in and not any more; he doesn’t need a big, showy apartment to be comfortable. In general, it seems his life is going rather well…
But that isn’t quite the case.
For years, ever since he found out about the hereditary nature of mental illness, Benedict has been terrified that, one day, he too is going to start seeing things and hearing things that aren’t there. His own sanity is something that he treasures very dearly, and he works very hard to maintain it and keep himself together.
Lately, however, things have been…different. He’s been having thoughts that don’t seem to be his own, in one voice that doesn’t seem to quite be his own. For example, he can’t get the question, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” out of his head. He thinks about it all the time. He has no idea why. His addiction to tea has become even stronger than before – in the past, he had it two or three or four times a day, but now, he has a mug on him at almost all times, and he gets twitchy and irritable when he doesn’t. Benedict doesn’t know what it is that’s wrong with it. All he knows is that something is wrong…
family
Linda Milner [nee. Keppel], mother, deceased
Arthur Milner, father, deceased
Evangeline Milner, grandmother, 91
likes
Helping people
Tea
England
Tea
Talking to people
Fresh air
Fireplaces
Tea
Good books
Psychology
Tea
Figuring people out
Lateral thinking puzzles
Tea
Teacups (he collects them)
Scarves and double-breasted coats
Mornings
Tea
Big dogs
Oldies music – like, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s oldies
TEA
dislikes
Coffee. Bloody awful stuff.
Bowler hats – he has an irrational fear of them
Ceiling fans – see above
eReaders
Prejudice and preemptive judgment
Dark places, or places that aren’t well-lit
Shoe shopping – he has very big feet, and it’s hard to find shoes in his size
Screamo music
Video games
Fast food
Staying up late
Rivalry
Excessive cursing or vulgarity
Horror movies
Very small dogs, he’s always afraid he’ll kick them or step on them by accident
other notes He has a surprisingly deep, rich, almost melodic voice, a sort of pleasant baritone. It gets higher when he’s nervous.
...literature*
book title Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
backstory
After receiving some directions from the Cheshire Cat, Alice stumbles across a tea party being hosted by the Mad Hatter at a large table – however, only the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse are at the tea party. Though the three of them occupy only one corner of the enormous table, they insist that there is no room for Alice to sit down. After she does anyway, the Hatter comments that her hair needs cutting, and Alice reprimands him by saying he shouldn’t make personal comments.
The Hare and the Hatter make biting and slightly offensive remarks in response to a lot of things Alice says, recite nonsensical poetry, torment the sleepy Dormouse, and tell riddles that have no answer, including the Hatter’s famous riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” When Alice later asks for the answer, the Hatter confesses he doesn’t know. In general, nothing about the scene, or really anything either the Hatter or the Hare says, makes any sense.
...roleplayer*
name Zelda
