player.
NAME/HANDLE: tussah
PERSONAL JOURNAL: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) dondarrion
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: yes!
CONTACT: pm to babysit
OTHER CHARACTERS:Alayne Stone | A Song of Ice and Fire | wont
Pearl Jones | American Vampire | teething
character.
CHARACTER NAME: Joan Watson
SERIES: Elementary ( on Wikipedia, on Wikia )
CANON POINT: Post S01E18, Déjà Vu All Over Again
AGE: No age has been canonly given for Joan. I play her in her late thirties.
APPEARANCE: Joan Watson is portrayed by Lucy Liu on the television show Elementary.
PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY:
PERSONALITY:
The glimpses we're afforded of Joan Watson's family life point towards a fairly stereotypical Asian-American childhood. An overachieving daughter who still vies for her mother's approval despite being a mature and independent adult, Joan is keenly aware of the expectations placed on her and all the ways she manages (or fails) to meet them. Hardworking, persistent and always owning up to her responsibilities (sometimes to a fault), Joan's achievements paved her way to becoming a doctor and, eventually, a surgeon (a very good one, I might add). It was this same sense of responsibility that ultimately kept her from returning to practice after she was found not guilty of negligence in the death of one of her patients. Unable to wholly atone for her mistakes, she found herself unable to pick up a scalpel again; but rather than allow this tragedy to complete capsize her life, Joan used it as a transformational catalyst to become a sober companion instead.
Being a sober companion, much like being a doctor before that, required a certain bedside manner as well as as the constant desire and drive to help the people around her. Joan has no difficulty interacting with others, even strangers; for her, rapport comes easily. (Though, one should note a certain awkwardness when forced into romantic situations, as well as a noted strain when dealing with longer-term friendships with people who have seen Joan's life run its greater course.) Unsurprisingly, sober companionship demanded a certain amount of persistence on Joan's part and her time spent dealing with recovering addicts meant that she had to be equal parts thick-skinned and compassionate, knowing when best to be each. A very high level of empathy is needed in order to lend perpetual support to individuals who sometimes refuse to help themselves, though Joan often took this to a higher level of investment — often taking personal responsibility in the actions of others and things otherwise outside her control (see: the end of her practicing career and her drug-using ex-lover Liam). As a result, Joan still has her fair share of lingering ghosts — shrouds of either doubt or failure that only reveal themselves over time. (Note, although Joan's personality has its flaws, they are often harder to spot than the more “obvious” and immediate flaws of those around her. This is not as the result of Joan being in any way an insincere or disingenuous person. If anything, she is hyperearnest, often looking to relay her own experiences in order to create a bridge between herself and other people. In the same breath, however, it can be said that Joan is a very private person. With the exception of Sherlock more and more, she is constantly drawing and reinforcing her personal boundaries, delineating the space she needs around herself in order to continue to perform as well as she can. Her past, her failures and her occasional tendency to self-blame are generally kept well within this 'safe space'. Patterns of behavior are emergent, however, and can be spotted the more of Joan’s past is known by the observer.)
Joan can be, by necessity, a micromanager and will not hesitate to harangue somebody else so long as she feels that it's for their benefit. Nor does Joan hesitate or shy away from hard truths, though she is never shown to be tactless or rude. Most of Joan's life has been spent in careful balance, trying to find the right path to walk between being goal-oriented and losing sight of the bigger picture; being emotionally supportive without being enabling; being aggressive but not alienating. To her credit, she walked (and continues to walk) this line exceedingly well, even into her latest foray of becoming a consultant detective. This change of occupation is triggered by her exposure to Sherlock and his lifestyle, but it is not one without a basis in her previous professions.
As both a doctor and a sober companion, most of Joan’s “diagnoses” had a foundation in observation — the collation and cross-reference of various symptoms, games of Spot the Warning Signs when dealing with the threat of a possible relapse. Being able to first find the clues and then decipher them in a meaningful way had been key in both of her previous professions — and are now invaluable as a consulting detective. Joan’s observational skills as well as her powers of deduction (backed by a strong intuition) are admirable and even win her praise from Sherlock on several occasion. She is not hyper aware of her surroundings the way that Sherlock is, but her recent training means that she is able to spot details that would otherwise go overlooked (and not only spot the details but question them, exploring all the various possibilities therein). Although this is an extremely helpful ability — one which has helped both Joan and Sherlock out of a pinch in the past — it has also lead to spikes of suspicion and paranoia on Joan’s part, leading Sherlock to even accuse her once of seeing conspiracy theories everywhere (though, in the end Joan had been right and all of Sherlock’s speculation had been a test).
With the recent change of Joan's profession comes the unsettling of her character and an important shift in her dynamic with Sherlock in particular. The question on whether or not Joan should leave sober companionship in exchange for a burgeoning career as a detective is one raised several times by the people closest to her (her friends and her therapist, most notably, though Joan's mother seems to appreciate the new spark her daughter has found for life). This manages to successfully throw Joan for a loop, exposing some of Joan's more deeply-seated issues — in particular prompting commentary from some of her friends on how she's seemed "lost" since leaving medical practice to become a sober companion. While they saw her previous careers as "helping people", they view this later venture as a kind of life crisis — an assessment that derails Joan into doubt despite her newfound enthusiasm for her work.
Being exposed to Sherlock has shown Joan a new way of viewing the world. Everything — scenarios, places, even people — present a puzzle (not entirely unlike how Joan's previous patients presented medical mysteries needing to be both diagnosed and then corrected). According to Sherlock, once a person starts seeing puzzles everywhere, it's impossible to go back to viewing the world as it once was. Traveling by Sherlock's side as a sober companion has 'unlocked' that particular door within Joan, nurturing a desire that was already there but widening it as a way to see the world around her as a whole.
ABILITIES: As a former practicing doctor, Joan Watson has considerable medical knowledge in both general practice as well as surgery specialization. Her time spent as a professional sober companion has complemented these skills with a more psychologically-slanted bed-side manner — bordering but never quite arriving at proper therapy or counseling. Joan's deductive skills as well as her powers of observation are unsurprisingly second to Sherlock's, though he believes that they are worth nurturing — to the point that he supports her abandoning her career as a sober companion to become a burgeoning consulting detective.
Given Joan's background as a doctor, she originally has little understanding of the law and law enforcement. That changes, however, once she begins working with Sherlock. His regimen of training for Joan means that she has cultivated a bevy of unsurprising (bordering on illegal) skills. They include various forms of self defense, lock picking, safe cracking and carjacking. He has also implemented a reading list of various philosophers and thinkers who have influenced the evolution of deductionary thought. POSSESSIONS:» the clothes on her back | as seen here ( + this coat )
» crossbody leather purse | with contents (house keys, glasses and case, wallet, chapstick)
» pair of NYPD regulation handcuffs | no keys
» cell phone | G5 iPhone
» burner phone | prepaid NOKIA flip phone
» lockpicks | in travel case
» slim jim | for jimmying car locks
» book | The Hive and Honey-bee (1853)
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: ( 1, 2 | in text conversation )
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: N/A |
