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corknut
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Character Name: Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett
Series: Orange is the New Black
Age: It's never stated in canon, but she's definitely over 18. I'd pin her at mid-20s.
From When?: The very end of episode 1x13, "Can't Fix Crazy". After threatening the life of and moving in to attack fellow inmate Piper Chapman, Piper turns the tables and knocks Tiffany to the ground, punching her repeatedly in the face and rendering her unconscious. Tiffany doesn't die, but she takes a pretty brutal beating-- enough to knock out a good deal of her (already pretty rotten) teeth and cause her to still have noticeable bruises over a month later.
Inmate/Warden:
Inmate! There's a lot she needs to change about herself, honestly-- she's an emotional and mental mess. The main things that she needs help with include anger management, appropriate channeling of violent tendencies, and encouragement to tone down the insults, slurs, and lashing out. It's not an impossible job-- at one point (past her canon point, but still) she says that she likes being kind to people, and I think that on some level she really did mean that. But she'll need significant development before she'll be ready to consistently walk the walk instead of just talking the talk.
Another big thing is that she needs to learn how to develop her own beliefs, instead of just going along with whatever other people influence her into believing. At this point, she's not much of a free thinker. In the beginning, a warden could use this to their advantage-- she does respond well to authority figures that respect (or at least appear to respect) her. Her lawyer is an example of this in the first season, and one of the prison COs is an example of it in the second. But the beliefs and values that others lead her to aren't very secure in her, and it doesn't take much for her to question or abandon them. If someone could help her find some that are truly her own, she'd be a lot less lost in the long run.
Abilities/Powers:
Nothing supernatural or notable.
Personality:
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 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 (preferably positive, but she seems okay with negative attention too), 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 it'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 (past my canon point for her, but still relevant to her characterization), she drops her vendettas against a couple of the other characters and backs off on the religion a bit, though her beliefs and cause du jour continue to yo-yo around. Her first big influencer is one of the COs, 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 (whether or not this means Tiffany is fully over her religion-inspired homophobia remains to be seen). She get 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.
Barge Reactions:
She'd likely adapt to life on the Barge better than most, given that she'd be coming in from prison-- the Barge is actually a lot nicer and has a lot more freedom than what she's used to. She'd enjoy that, but she wouldn't take it for granted-- because she'd be well aware that it's still prison, that she has no power when compared to the wardens and the Admiral, and that any privileges can be taken away at a moment's notice. That's not to say that she'd be a model prisoner and never get into trouble-- she's far too hot-headed for that-- but she wouldn't be likely to purposefully provoke the wardens (other inmates are another story). She tends to find her own way to operate within the system rather than trying to rebel against it. At most she'd try to bend the rules or wiggle her way through loopholes, and if push came to shove, she'd get back into line if a warden asked her to. Despite all her issues, one thing she doesn't have is a problem with authority. She might not always like the people who are in charge and she'll bitch about them behind their backs-- but she doesn't get up in their faces or threaten them the way she might with someone who's more on her "level", nor does she seem to particularly resent the power they have over her. In canon, one of the nastier guards calls her a "missed opportunity for cradle death" and says some lewd things about Jesus; she barely reacts. A fellow prisoner doing the same thing would probably get insulted right back, if not physically assaulted.
As far as other inmates go, she'd probably treat a lot of them similarly to how she treats her fellow inmates back in Litchfield. She'd have to get used to the idea that some of them are non-human or people from other worlds (despite her gullibility, those are things she'd probably demand proof for before she accepted them as real, at least at first) and she'd be a bit intimidated by the ones with powers, but the familiarity of the setting would keep her from feeling too unsure and out of place.
Floods and breaches would be a bit of a different story, because they're nothing like anything she's ever experienced before-- especially the breaches. Having her memories altered and her mind messed with would greatly upset her and probably lead to a kind of mild existential crisis, which she would need to be talked through by people who are more used to it. Luckily, she's easily pacified when she's scared or upset (if the person doing the pacifying is someone she knows or trusts at least a little bit, anyway), so it wouldn't cause any permanent mental damage.
Path to Redemption:
One of the best ways to earn Tiffany's admiration and respect is to respect her in turn, and to just be nice to her. After a CO takes her under his wing in season 2, she sincerely thanks him, telling him that she will be "forever grateful to [him]" and admitting that he's "the first person who's ever really taken the time to talk to [her]". Unfortunately, there are a lot of things about her that make people have very good reasons to not want to be nice and polite to her-- which is perfectly understandable, given the things she says and does, but it also doesn't do her much good.
Respect, though, is even more important than niceness in her eyes. The two times we know of that she's all out attempted murder were both because they target of her ire "disrespected" her. She's probably had to deal with a lack of respect for her entire life-- because of her words and actions, but also because of her class background-- and it's developed into a huge issue for her. One of the best things someone can do for her is to adopt the attitude of "I don't always respect what you do and say, but I do respect you as a person". Warden-wise, she'd do best with someone with a huge amount of patience-- someone who could take the high road and deal with her impulsivity, anger, and general horribleness in stride, without letting it get to them too much. It's incredibly easy to get frustrated with or offended by her, and she (for obvious reasons) can be trying even for the most patient people to deal with... but on her end, she (again, for obvious reasons) responds a lot better to "Hey, so why did you do/say this terrible thing? Let's talk about it and figure out a better solution for next time" than to "Cut that out, you stupid fucking hillbilly". This isn't to say that tough love would never work on her or that I would be unhappy with her having an impatient warden (I actually think it could be really interesting to see how it would go down!), but patience and kindness would get the quickest results. Someone who knows the ins and outs of Christianity (whether or not they're Christian themselves) would also be a plus-- even though she got into religion in a disingenuous way, it's a real and important part of her life now, and it means a lot to her when people take her faith seriously. Someone with knowledge of the Bible could also use that to show her that Jesus probably wouldn't be all about insulting gay people, trans people, etc., too. (Seriously, someone needs to introduce her to "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged" at some point; it would blow her mind.)
As for motivations to change, one of the biggest would be a simple desire not to be lonely. In season 2, her friend group ends up casting her out for various reasons, one of which is that they're tired of her being so combative and easily-angered. She's lost for a while, wandering around looking for someone new to glom onto-- at one point she even gets a little teary when she sees her old friends goofing around and having fun without her. Even with how abrasive and nasty she can be at times, connection is still important to her, and "If you continue down this path no one will want to be around you" is a wake-up call that she really needs to hear in one form or another.
Another good thing for a warden to focus on is how malleable and easily manipulated she is. She's uneducated, but even though she's no genius, she's not an idiot either-- she should be capable of sussing out when people are genuinely on her side, and when they're clearly just messing with her. I think a lot of this is rooted in both desperation for validation, and lack of confidence in her own opinions. Getting her to figure out what her core beliefs and values are-- not what others tell her her beliefs and values should be-- will help her gain more confidence in herself, which in turn will keep her from taking everything people say to her at face value.
History:
Wikipedia gives the most straightforward and detailed summary of her backstory and canon appearances, but she has a page on the OITNB wiki too. And since inmate files include objective summaries of characters' lives, I'll also include a chronological summary and expansion of the most important parts of the above links, written as objectively as possible and focusing on the things that might be most useful to a warden:
♻ She grew up in poverty, likely in a large family (including extended members; aunts and uncles and cousins are mentioned a few times) where she didn't get much individual attention.
♻ As an adult, she's sexually irresponsible, and uses abortions as birth control in lieu of condoms or pills. She's also a regular meth user.
♻ On her way out of the clinic after her fifth abortion, a disapproving nurse makes a rude comment ("Number five, huh? We should give you a punch card: 'get the sixth one free'"). Tiffany heads out to her waiting friend's car to grab his rifle, goes back into the clinic, and shoots the nurse.
♻ At her trial, a lawyer from a Christian firm approaches her and explains that he'll be representing her instead of her court-appointed public defender. Various extremist pro-lifers have heard about her actions and assumed that she did what she did as a protest against abortion, and a group of them have gotten together to fund her defense (and give a monthly stipend to her family while she serves time). Tiffany starts to explain that her reasons weren't religious, but her new lawyer cuts her off and advises her to keep quiet about that. When they enter the courtroom, a group of people in the gallery cheer and applaud, waving signs that say things like "Tiffany for President", "Thank You, Tiffany", "Defender of the Unborn", etc.
♻ Sometime between her trial and the start of canon, she comes to fully embrace the extremist form of Christianity that her lawyer espouses. She committed a serious crime, and yet it gained her fame, fans, and complimentary legal counsel; she considers this to be a God-given miracle.
♻ At some point, she ends up at Litchfield Penitentiary-- a federal prison in New York, where she spends at least two years before the start of canon. She develops a group of friends and followers who are impressed with her status as "defender of the unborn", but most of the other prisoners are turned off by her preaching and religion-based bigotry. She also earns the nickname "Pennsatucky" (presumably a corruption of Pennsyltucky), which those close to her often shorten to "Tucky".
♻ After reporting two inmates for "lesbian activity" (really just sexually-charged dancing) and getting one of them (Piper Chapman) thrown into solitary for a few days, some of the other inmates conspire to get revenge for this (and for her preaching and unpleasantness in general) by tricking her into thinking that she is a faith-healer-- they pretend to have various ailments, and let her "fix" them. This comes to a head when a group of juvenile delinquents are brought on a prison tour as a deterrent method. One of the most stubborn kids (a teenage girl in a wheelchair) is left alone in the bathroom, and Piper tells Tiffany that "there's a soul in the bathroom that needs saving". After removing the girl from her wheelchair and attempting to heal her legs, Tiffany is hauled off to the prison psych ward. After an intake interview in which she insists that God has given her healing powers and that she and all the other prisoners have proof, she's diagnosed as delusional and admitted.
♻ After hearing from another inmate how bad the psych ward is (not much psychiatric help actually happens; prisoners instead spend most of their time strapped down and continually medicated), Piper admits to the higher-ups that Tiffany's belief that she can faith-heal is based on a prank, not on delusions. Tiffany is released after just a few days, though she's noticeably affected by the experience: she's depressed, her self-confidence is shot, and her belief in God is shaken.
♻ A concerned friend contacts her lawyer, who comes to visit and encourage her. He reassures her that God not stopping bad things from happening doesn't mean He doesn't exist, and tells her that maybe God wants her to forgive Piper and lead her to Him.
♻ Tiffany sits down and has a civil talk with Piper, in which she explains her feelings about God and expresses how hurt she was that the other inmates used her faith to trick her. She convinces Piper to pray for God's forgiveness. When Piper does so, Tiffany hugs her-- grudge and hate gone, just like that-- and offers to baptize her. At first, Piper reluctantly agrees, but then changes her mind and explains that she's sorry, but she doesn't feel right pretending that she believes in God just to placate Tiffany. Tiffany takes this as an affront both to God and to herself, and remembers back to what her lawyer said about God wanting to use her to help good people find Him. Maybe, she thinks, the reverse is also true: maybe God also wants to use her to punish bad people! She consults her Bible, and opens to a page containing Luke 19:27-- ""But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence." She takes this as a clear sign that God wants her to kill Piper in His name.
♻ Over the next few days, she threatens Piper several times-- once by leaving a dead rat and a death threat in her bunk, and then again by cornering her in the shower with a razor blade (she almost uses it on Piper, but a guard interrupts them). Then later, while performing in the prison's annual Christmas pageant, she sees Piper get up out of her seat in the audience and leave. Tiffany sneaks off the stage and follows her, meeting her in the prison yard and attempting to stab her with a wooden cross. Tired of being stalked and harassed, Piper snaps, tackling Tiffany and beating her to a bloody pulp. Her canon point is during this fight, after she falls unconscious.
Sample Journal Entry:
[The audio comes on! A girl with a slightly Appalachian accent starts to speak.]
Okay listen, I know we got to get jobs here, but I been wondering: do we get to make requests? 'Cause I ain't afraid to say, I don't want to end up in laundry again. If I don't have to. I did that at the old place and it might sound like a cushy job and all, just folding and sorting and tossing stuff in the dryers, but I have to tell you it gets old after a while. We got a lot of stinky bitches in prison-- and uh, stinky guys here too, I bet-- and they don't give us gloves before making us touch your shit.
[She makes a face at the memory.]
So I was thinking, I could work in the chapel. I'll keep everything real nice and neat, and make sure all the Bibles get put away and everything. And I ain't a minister or nothing, but I could lead services too; I've done it before. I can serve my time and make something of it, leading people to Christ. What sounds more redemptive than that?
Sample RP:
The differences between the Barge and Litchfield are striking, and it isn't just because this place has a pool.
Redeeming yourself and becoming a better person seems to be the name of the game here-- which is weird, because every other prison setting she's been in or heard of has been all about serving your time quietly, doing what the guards say, and then getting out when your sentence is up. Here, she doesn't even have a sentence. No one's said she's here for punishment. They say she's here to get better, which is a little confusing, because she didn't know there was that much wrong with her in the first place.
Oh sure, she has her problems; she knows that. She gets angry, and the anger takes control. People have been telling her her whole life not to get so angry, but it never seems like that big of a deal to her, because everyone gets angry sometimes. Everyone yells and screams and threatens-- and okay, not everyone tries to slam a guy's head into a wall like she'd done with that fucking asshole in the dining hall last week, but he'd really been asking for it.
Count to ten, that warden had told her. He wouldn't send her down to level 0 this time, especially since he'd pulled her away before she did any damage, but next time would be a different story. She doesn't have to fight when someone makes her mad. She doesn't even have to yell abuse at them. She can take the high road, let it go, go off and do something else.
The problem is, the anger doesn't always want to sit around and listen to her count. It wants action-- and usually, it doesn't bother to ask for permission first.
Special Notes:
Note #1: 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.
Note #2: Orange is the New Black is inspired by a memoir of the same name, which leads some people to wonder if playing from it is a form of real-person RP, especially since there are some characters from the book that have counterparts (albeit heavily fictionalized counterparts) in the show. However, Tiffany isn’t really one of those characters. There is a minor character in the book that has the same nickname (“Pennsatucky”), but they’re nothing alike, and the book’s author has said that Tiffany’s character on the show isn’t actually based on the real-life Pennsatucky.
User DW:
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E-mail: ZieglerFan719@gmail.com
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Character Name: Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett
Series: Orange is the New Black
Age: It's never stated in canon, but she's definitely over 18. I'd pin her at mid-20s.
From When?: The very end of episode 1x13, "Can't Fix Crazy". After threatening the life of and moving in to attack fellow inmate Piper Chapman, Piper turns the tables and knocks Tiffany to the ground, punching her repeatedly in the face and rendering her unconscious. Tiffany doesn't die, but she takes a pretty brutal beating-- enough to knock out a good deal of her (already pretty rotten) teeth and cause her to still have noticeable bruises over a month later.
Inmate/Warden:
Inmate! There's a lot she needs to change about herself, honestly-- she's an emotional and mental mess. The main things that she needs help with include anger management, appropriate channeling of violent tendencies, and encouragement to tone down the insults, slurs, and lashing out. It's not an impossible job-- at one point (past her canon point, but still) she says that she likes being kind to people, and I think that on some level she really did mean that. But she'll need significant development before she'll be ready to consistently walk the walk instead of just talking the talk.
Another big thing is that she needs to learn how to develop her own beliefs, instead of just going along with whatever other people influence her into believing. At this point, she's not much of a free thinker. In the beginning, a warden could use this to their advantage-- she does respond well to authority figures that respect (or at least appear to respect) her. Her lawyer is an example of this in the first season, and one of the prison COs is an example of it in the second. But the beliefs and values that others lead her to aren't very secure in her, and it doesn't take much for her to question or abandon them. If someone could help her find some that are truly her own, she'd be a lot less lost in the long run.
Abilities/Powers:
Nothing supernatural or notable.
Personality:
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 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 (preferably positive, but she seems okay with negative attention too), 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 it'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 (past my canon point for her, but still relevant to her characterization), she drops her vendettas against a couple of the other characters and backs off on the religion a bit, though her beliefs and cause du jour continue to yo-yo around. Her first big influencer is one of the COs, 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 (whether or not this means Tiffany is fully over her religion-inspired homophobia remains to be seen). She get 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.
Barge Reactions:
She'd likely adapt to life on the Barge better than most, given that she'd be coming in from prison-- the Barge is actually a lot nicer and has a lot more freedom than what she's used to. She'd enjoy that, but she wouldn't take it for granted-- because she'd be well aware that it's still prison, that she has no power when compared to the wardens and the Admiral, and that any privileges can be taken away at a moment's notice. That's not to say that she'd be a model prisoner and never get into trouble-- she's far too hot-headed for that-- but she wouldn't be likely to purposefully provoke the wardens (other inmates are another story). She tends to find her own way to operate within the system rather than trying to rebel against it. At most she'd try to bend the rules or wiggle her way through loopholes, and if push came to shove, she'd get back into line if a warden asked her to. Despite all her issues, one thing she doesn't have is a problem with authority. She might not always like the people who are in charge and she'll bitch about them behind their backs-- but she doesn't get up in their faces or threaten them the way she might with someone who's more on her "level", nor does she seem to particularly resent the power they have over her. In canon, one of the nastier guards calls her a "missed opportunity for cradle death" and says some lewd things about Jesus; she barely reacts. A fellow prisoner doing the same thing would probably get insulted right back, if not physically assaulted.
As far as other inmates go, she'd probably treat a lot of them similarly to how she treats her fellow inmates back in Litchfield. She'd have to get used to the idea that some of them are non-human or people from other worlds (despite her gullibility, those are things she'd probably demand proof for before she accepted them as real, at least at first) and she'd be a bit intimidated by the ones with powers, but the familiarity of the setting would keep her from feeling too unsure and out of place.
Floods and breaches would be a bit of a different story, because they're nothing like anything she's ever experienced before-- especially the breaches. Having her memories altered and her mind messed with would greatly upset her and probably lead to a kind of mild existential crisis, which she would need to be talked through by people who are more used to it. Luckily, she's easily pacified when she's scared or upset (if the person doing the pacifying is someone she knows or trusts at least a little bit, anyway), so it wouldn't cause any permanent mental damage.
Path to Redemption:
One of the best ways to earn Tiffany's admiration and respect is to respect her in turn, and to just be nice to her. After a CO takes her under his wing in season 2, she sincerely thanks him, telling him that she will be "forever grateful to [him]" and admitting that he's "the first person who's ever really taken the time to talk to [her]". Unfortunately, there are a lot of things about her that make people have very good reasons to not want to be nice and polite to her-- which is perfectly understandable, given the things she says and does, but it also doesn't do her much good.
Respect, though, is even more important than niceness in her eyes. The two times we know of that she's all out attempted murder were both because they target of her ire "disrespected" her. She's probably had to deal with a lack of respect for her entire life-- because of her words and actions, but also because of her class background-- and it's developed into a huge issue for her. One of the best things someone can do for her is to adopt the attitude of "I don't always respect what you do and say, but I do respect you as a person". Warden-wise, she'd do best with someone with a huge amount of patience-- someone who could take the high road and deal with her impulsivity, anger, and general horribleness in stride, without letting it get to them too much. It's incredibly easy to get frustrated with or offended by her, and she (for obvious reasons) can be trying even for the most patient people to deal with... but on her end, she (again, for obvious reasons) responds a lot better to "Hey, so why did you do/say this terrible thing? Let's talk about it and figure out a better solution for next time" than to "Cut that out, you stupid fucking hillbilly". This isn't to say that tough love would never work on her or that I would be unhappy with her having an impatient warden (I actually think it could be really interesting to see how it would go down!), but patience and kindness would get the quickest results. Someone who knows the ins and outs of Christianity (whether or not they're Christian themselves) would also be a plus-- even though she got into religion in a disingenuous way, it's a real and important part of her life now, and it means a lot to her when people take her faith seriously. Someone with knowledge of the Bible could also use that to show her that Jesus probably wouldn't be all about insulting gay people, trans people, etc., too. (Seriously, someone needs to introduce her to "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged" at some point; it would blow her mind.)
As for motivations to change, one of the biggest would be a simple desire not to be lonely. In season 2, her friend group ends up casting her out for various reasons, one of which is that they're tired of her being so combative and easily-angered. She's lost for a while, wandering around looking for someone new to glom onto-- at one point she even gets a little teary when she sees her old friends goofing around and having fun without her. Even with how abrasive and nasty she can be at times, connection is still important to her, and "If you continue down this path no one will want to be around you" is a wake-up call that she really needs to hear in one form or another.
Another good thing for a warden to focus on is how malleable and easily manipulated she is. She's uneducated, but even though she's no genius, she's not an idiot either-- she should be capable of sussing out when people are genuinely on her side, and when they're clearly just messing with her. I think a lot of this is rooted in both desperation for validation, and lack of confidence in her own opinions. Getting her to figure out what her core beliefs and values are-- not what others tell her her beliefs and values should be-- will help her gain more confidence in herself, which in turn will keep her from taking everything people say to her at face value.
History:
Wikipedia gives the most straightforward and detailed summary of her backstory and canon appearances, but she has a page on the OITNB wiki too. And since inmate files include objective summaries of characters' lives, I'll also include a chronological summary and expansion of the most important parts of the above links, written as objectively as possible and focusing on the things that might be most useful to a warden:
♻ She grew up in poverty, likely in a large family (including extended members; aunts and uncles and cousins are mentioned a few times) where she didn't get much individual attention.
♻ As an adult, she's sexually irresponsible, and uses abortions as birth control in lieu of condoms or pills. She's also a regular meth user.
♻ On her way out of the clinic after her fifth abortion, a disapproving nurse makes a rude comment ("Number five, huh? We should give you a punch card: 'get the sixth one free'"). Tiffany heads out to her waiting friend's car to grab his rifle, goes back into the clinic, and shoots the nurse.
♻ At her trial, a lawyer from a Christian firm approaches her and explains that he'll be representing her instead of her court-appointed public defender. Various extremist pro-lifers have heard about her actions and assumed that she did what she did as a protest against abortion, and a group of them have gotten together to fund her defense (and give a monthly stipend to her family while she serves time). Tiffany starts to explain that her reasons weren't religious, but her new lawyer cuts her off and advises her to keep quiet about that. When they enter the courtroom, a group of people in the gallery cheer and applaud, waving signs that say things like "Tiffany for President", "Thank You, Tiffany", "Defender of the Unborn", etc.
♻ Sometime between her trial and the start of canon, she comes to fully embrace the extremist form of Christianity that her lawyer espouses. She committed a serious crime, and yet it gained her fame, fans, and complimentary legal counsel; she considers this to be a God-given miracle.
♻ At some point, she ends up at Litchfield Penitentiary-- a federal prison in New York, where she spends at least two years before the start of canon. She develops a group of friends and followers who are impressed with her status as "defender of the unborn", but most of the other prisoners are turned off by her preaching and religion-based bigotry. She also earns the nickname "Pennsatucky" (presumably a corruption of Pennsyltucky), which those close to her often shorten to "Tucky".
♻ After reporting two inmates for "lesbian activity" (really just sexually-charged dancing) and getting one of them (Piper Chapman) thrown into solitary for a few days, some of the other inmates conspire to get revenge for this (and for her preaching and unpleasantness in general) by tricking her into thinking that she is a faith-healer-- they pretend to have various ailments, and let her "fix" them. This comes to a head when a group of juvenile delinquents are brought on a prison tour as a deterrent method. One of the most stubborn kids (a teenage girl in a wheelchair) is left alone in the bathroom, and Piper tells Tiffany that "there's a soul in the bathroom that needs saving". After removing the girl from her wheelchair and attempting to heal her legs, Tiffany is hauled off to the prison psych ward. After an intake interview in which she insists that God has given her healing powers and that she and all the other prisoners have proof, she's diagnosed as delusional and admitted.
♻ After hearing from another inmate how bad the psych ward is (not much psychiatric help actually happens; prisoners instead spend most of their time strapped down and continually medicated), Piper admits to the higher-ups that Tiffany's belief that she can faith-heal is based on a prank, not on delusions. Tiffany is released after just a few days, though she's noticeably affected by the experience: she's depressed, her self-confidence is shot, and her belief in God is shaken.
♻ A concerned friend contacts her lawyer, who comes to visit and encourage her. He reassures her that God not stopping bad things from happening doesn't mean He doesn't exist, and tells her that maybe God wants her to forgive Piper and lead her to Him.
♻ Tiffany sits down and has a civil talk with Piper, in which she explains her feelings about God and expresses how hurt she was that the other inmates used her faith to trick her. She convinces Piper to pray for God's forgiveness. When Piper does so, Tiffany hugs her-- grudge and hate gone, just like that-- and offers to baptize her. At first, Piper reluctantly agrees, but then changes her mind and explains that she's sorry, but she doesn't feel right pretending that she believes in God just to placate Tiffany. Tiffany takes this as an affront both to God and to herself, and remembers back to what her lawyer said about God wanting to use her to help good people find Him. Maybe, she thinks, the reverse is also true: maybe God also wants to use her to punish bad people! She consults her Bible, and opens to a page containing Luke 19:27-- ""But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence." She takes this as a clear sign that God wants her to kill Piper in His name.
♻ Over the next few days, she threatens Piper several times-- once by leaving a dead rat and a death threat in her bunk, and then again by cornering her in the shower with a razor blade (she almost uses it on Piper, but a guard interrupts them). Then later, while performing in the prison's annual Christmas pageant, she sees Piper get up out of her seat in the audience and leave. Tiffany sneaks off the stage and follows her, meeting her in the prison yard and attempting to stab her with a wooden cross. Tired of being stalked and harassed, Piper snaps, tackling Tiffany and beating her to a bloody pulp. Her canon point is during this fight, after she falls unconscious.
Sample Journal Entry:
[The audio comes on! A girl with a slightly Appalachian accent starts to speak.]
Okay listen, I know we got to get jobs here, but I been wondering: do we get to make requests? 'Cause I ain't afraid to say, I don't want to end up in laundry again. If I don't have to. I did that at the old place and it might sound like a cushy job and all, just folding and sorting and tossing stuff in the dryers, but I have to tell you it gets old after a while. We got a lot of stinky bitches in prison-- and uh, stinky guys here too, I bet-- and they don't give us gloves before making us touch your shit.
[She makes a face at the memory.]
So I was thinking, I could work in the chapel. I'll keep everything real nice and neat, and make sure all the Bibles get put away and everything. And I ain't a minister or nothing, but I could lead services too; I've done it before. I can serve my time and make something of it, leading people to Christ. What sounds more redemptive than that?
Sample RP:
The differences between the Barge and Litchfield are striking, and it isn't just because this place has a pool.
Redeeming yourself and becoming a better person seems to be the name of the game here-- which is weird, because every other prison setting she's been in or heard of has been all about serving your time quietly, doing what the guards say, and then getting out when your sentence is up. Here, she doesn't even have a sentence. No one's said she's here for punishment. They say she's here to get better, which is a little confusing, because she didn't know there was that much wrong with her in the first place.
Oh sure, she has her problems; she knows that. She gets angry, and the anger takes control. People have been telling her her whole life not to get so angry, but it never seems like that big of a deal to her, because everyone gets angry sometimes. Everyone yells and screams and threatens-- and okay, not everyone tries to slam a guy's head into a wall like she'd done with that fucking asshole in the dining hall last week, but he'd really been asking for it.
Count to ten, that warden had told her. He wouldn't send her down to level 0 this time, especially since he'd pulled her away before she did any damage, but next time would be a different story. She doesn't have to fight when someone makes her mad. She doesn't even have to yell abuse at them. She can take the high road, let it go, go off and do something else.
The problem is, the anger doesn't always want to sit around and listen to her count. It wants action-- and usually, it doesn't bother to ask for permission first.
Special Notes:
Note #1: 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.
Note #2: Orange is the New Black is inspired by a memoir of the same name, which leads some people to wonder if playing from it is a form of real-person RP, especially since there are some characters from the book that have counterparts (albeit heavily fictionalized counterparts) in the show. However, Tiffany isn’t really one of those characters. There is a minor character in the book that has the same nickname (“Pennsatucky”), but they’re nothing alike, and the book’s author has said that Tiffany’s character on the show isn’t actually based on the real-life Pennsatucky.
PERSONALITY: 2020 EDITION (a WIP)
Outlook on life
Open-mindedness