tucky: (I'll put up a suggestion box)
Tiffany Doggett ([personal profile] tucky) wrote2015-03-17 10:52 am
Entry tags:

application for [community profile] maskormenace

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Iddy
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: [personal profile] corknut
IM / EMAIL: ZieglerFan719@gmail.com
PLURK: [plurk.com profile] ihdreniel
RETURNING: Nope!

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett
CHARACTER AGE: Never stated in canon; likely early to mid-20s
SERIES: Orange is the New Black
CHRONOLOGY: post-2x12, "It Was the Change"
CLASS: She would absolutely agree to be a hero. She's a very messed-up girl and her morals and actions are often suspect at best, but she's easily manipulated and drawn into things, and would completely eat up the "you're about to be a part of something bigger than yourself" stuff. (Though this does, of course, mean that she could possibly be swayed to other factions later on if given the right incentive.)
HOUSING: For everyone else's sanity she should probably be housed alone! I'd also be open to the possibility of her being housed in any of the cities, though I don't have any particular wants or requests.

BACKGROUND:
CW: Drug addiction/abuse, murder, religious extremism, homophobia

Tiffany comes from a completely normal, mundane modern-day Earth. As far as her entire world is concerned, she has a very, very small role; she was briefly catapulted into the limelight after shooting a nurse at an abortion clinic and still enjoys some level of stardom in certain circles (mainly extremist pro-life groups), but outside of that she's just an everyday citizen with absolutely no worldwide influence, power, or importance. In prison, she starts out as a ringleader of a group of women with similar backgrounds and opinions, but by her canonpoint she's fallen out of favor with them and is pretty much a loner. Wikipedia and the OITNB wiki give some information about her background and major storylines, but just in case that's not enough I have a write-up of my own here.

PERSONALITY:
CW: Murder, religious extremism, homophobia

Tiffany Doggett appears to be the poster child for religious extremism. She can spout the party line, knows all the buzzwords, and can turn anything into a preachable moment. She has an unsettling amount of fans and encouragers who write her letters, and she dutifully responds to them all (though it frustrates her that there are too many for her to keep all of their names and stories straight). If someone offered her her own conservative talk radio show, she would probably die of happiness.

But the truth is, religion is just a tool for her. That's not to say she doesn't truly believe it - she does, at least right now - but she believes it because she likes the attention and validation it gives her (or rather, the attention and validation that other people who believe the same things give her). In a flashback scene where she sees her little fanclub - cheering, clapping, waving signs with her name and face on them - for the first time, it's clear by the look on her face that she's thrilled. But without people who do that kind of thing for her, her "convictions" waver incredibly quickly. A few days alone in psychiatric lock-up had her declaring that there was no God (then, after a discussion with her lawyer, she was back to being a whole-hearted believer; she's a big flip-flopper, too), and if enough time without reinforcement and validation went by she'd likely abandon religion either partially or entirely and glom onto some other cause or belief. Even now, her understanding of Christianity seems to be rather shallow, so she's probably not all that familiar with the Bible or the intricacies of Christian religion outside of what her lawyer has told her (though she does have a Bible in prison that she reads from time to time). Her actress describes her as "lost and confused", and I'm inclined to agree. It seems like nothing in her mind is set in stone. She doesn't like or believe in things because she enjoys them or they give her personal fulfillment - she likes or believes in things based on what will earn her a significant amount of attention, because she enjoys and gets personal fulfillment from that and that alone. She's very emotionally immature, and as a result, she's very gullible and easily manipulated. It's hinted (and stated outright in a couple interviews with the writers, if information from those can be considered canon) that she grew up in a large family and got little in the way of parental attention, which goes a long way towards explaining some of her issues.

All that said, Tiffany is definitely not a harmless eccentric. She's clearly damaged, which is sad and sympathy-inducing, but she's done (and continues to do) terrible, inexcusable things, and she's in prison for a reason. A violent offender, she's vindictive, impulsive, and has some serious anger issues - three things that, in combination, make her pretty damn dangerous. She's perfectly capable of being calm and easy-going - even good-natured - and her default state tends to lean more towards neutral... but her emotions can and do change on a dime, which means you really never know how she's going to react to something. Hating someone and wanting to literally kill them is not necessarily a permanent state, and she's capable of coming back from it abnormally quickly. Likewise, the opposite is true: she can go from liking someone and wanting to be their friend to despising them and throwing around genuine death threats in 0.5 seconds if she believes she's been slighted somehow. Her reactions aren't really very consistent, either: she shoots and kills a clinic nurse for making a rude joke about how many abortions she's had, but there are other times when someone will make a far worse comment that she won't react violently to. The one constant is that she rarely plans her actions or thinks about the consequences, no matter how important or serious they may be. She's in prison for murdering someone who made a snide comment at her expense, she repeatedly threatened and attempted to kill someone in prison because they refused her offer to make amends by baptizing them, and she's endangered other characters more than once. In all of these situations, her actions were the result of spur-of-the-moment anger - she pretty much never acts in cold blood, but that's only because she doesn't think long-term enough to do much of anything with premeditation. She does whatever the fuck she feels like at any given moment - whether that's letting someone's comment roll off her back by reminding herself that they're is "hellbound" and she isn't, or threatening them with a filed-down toothbrush.

There's a lot about Tiffany that comes off as contrary and contradictory. She does a lot of bad things (ranging anywhere from harmless pranks to full-blown murder), but she's not manipulative or a schemer. She's bossy even on a good day and likes having people listen to her, but she's not really a leader. She plays at confidence and determination, but it doesn't take much to damage her faith in herself and her beliefs. When it comes down to it, she's really not confident in anything, and even though she tries to convince herself otherwise there's a part of her that knows it. She's more than capable of being a dangerous, violent person, and that should not in any way be overlooked or excused - but her thought processes and emotions are in many ways those of a petty, immature, insecure child. Her biggest weakness is that she's mentally weak. The only reason she's the "leader" of her first-season group of friends is that she was lucky enough to find people even more lost than she is.

In the second season, she drops her vendettas against a couple of the other characters and backs off on the proselytizing, though her beliefs and cause du jour continue to yo-yo around. After losing the support of her friends (who realized that they were getting sick of her), she wanders aimlessly for a bit, trying to awkwardly insert herself into other people's friend groups. Unsurprisingly, most people aren't willing to forgive and forget so easily. She finds an unlikely ally in Sam Healy, one of the prison guards, who fear-mongers to her about lesbians and gets her to believe that they're trying to take over the world. After getting curious about this, she moves on to one of her fellow prisoners, who tricks her into thinking that if she passes an initiation she can "join the gay agenda" and help women rule the world (though she still doesn't seem to be fully over her religion-inspired homophobia, as she expresses concern about whether she'd "have to do anything disgusting and against the word of God", i.e. lesbian sex). She also gets some help with anger management, which is a good sign - but given her track record, I'd hesitate to say that this means that she's easily "cured". It shows she's capable of beginning to learn how to control herself - but not that she won't make any backslides.

POWER:
Healing hands - a bit of an ironic power for someone so prone to aggression and violence. Tiffany's touch will have medicinal qualities. It won't be a cure-all; bigger things will take more energy and concentration than smaller things, and she won't be able to completely fix bad wounds or serious illnesses. Something extremely minor - a papercut, or a hangnail - she could heal unconsciously, with just a brush of her hand; anything more major than that would require a deliberate attempt. The biggest thing she could heal completely on her own would be something like a mild fever or a broken bone (a single, clean break; a shattered bone or multiple breaks would be beyond her capabilities). With anything more serious than that, she could contribute to the healing process, but it would only be a temporary fix that could be used to alleviate pain or stave off death until better help arrived.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
You know...

[She's lying back lazily on her couch, addressing the network via video.]

This is actually my first time ever being in Florida. Never went to Disneyland or nothing when I was a kid - or SeaWorld or, uh, Epcot or any other place like that. I always kind of wanted to, 'cause every kid wants to. They put 'em commercials on TV and make it seem like the best place in the world to go. Ain't that what they call it? The happiest place on Earth? I don't think there's a kid in the world that wouldn't want that.

Yeah. So I'm wondering if I could take all this money I got now and take a trip down to Disney. It exists here, right? 'Cause I know there's other stuff here that's kinda weird, like... well, like most things, actually. You're even a little bit in the future from me. From where I was.

[She bites her lip, considering her options.]

Hey, y'all got Google? I could Google it. Hold on, I'm gonna go see if I can do that right now. And then, if it's there, I'm gonna take me and all my friends off on a big road trip.

[Okay, so she doesn't actually have any friends. Details. Off goes the feed, and off goes Tiffany.]

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Tiffany has been called a hero before, but never like this. Before, the circumstances behind her heroism had been confusing and twisted, and had led to her incarceration; here, it's simple and straight-forward, no strings attached. She hadn't even had to do anything - she's a hero because they say she is, and that's the end of it. She has the tattoo - physical proof - to show for it. Other people are sometimes weirded out by their tattoos, and try to hide or get rid of them. Not Tiffany - she's endlessly fascinated by hers. It's a badge of honor in her mind, not a mark of ownership. It means that she's a part of something. She often catches herself glancing down at it (or at where she knows it is, if it's too bright out for it to be visible). Sometimes she keeps the lights in her apartment low just so she can see it. It's usually the last thing she looks at before falling asleep each night.

That's not all, of course; she's given plenty more besides. A job, a place to live, a bank account, free medical care - all with no real catch. Oh sure, she's expected to be one of the city's "heroes", and that's a big catch for some - but for Tiffany? It's just another perk. It makes her feel strong, valued, and important. It makes her feel like she can stand tall.

Who in their right mind would turn that down?

And so she doesn't. She embraces Heropa life with gusto - going to work, decorating her apartment, and even going out on the town some nights. She isn't exactly living in the lap of luxury, but her new financial situation allows for far more than she'd ever had before, and she's quite content with that. As far as she's concerned, this is the life.

But that's not to say she's never homesick. She misses her actual home (and has attempted to alleviate that by taking more than one weekend trip to Maurtia Falls, up in her home state), but being in prison for a few years had made her used to that; it had taken the edge off. But when she's feeling confused or lost or afraid, she actually finds herself longing for the structure that prison had provided. There'd been no surprises there.

Those feelings are something she keeps quiet about, for the most part. She's pretty sure they aren't a hero's thoughts.

FINAL NOTES:
Tiffany is a meth addict in prison for murder, and she has many offensive beliefs and opinions (including those involving homophobia, transphobia, and casual racism). If she's accepted into the game, I'll make heavy use of a permissions post, and won't have her bring up any potentially uncomfortable topics without permission from the player(s) I'm threading with. I'll also allow a general opt-out for people who would rather not thread with her at all.

Health-wise, she'd need regular dental care; she has a relatively new set of dentures and there's probably some sort of treatment plan that goes along with that (both things she can do on her own, and things she'd need a dentist's help with).